Chickens gutted by Georgia Tech innovation
14 Sep 2001
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are field-testing a technology that could lead to the automation of many visual-inspection tasks in the food processing industry.
The technology, called a systemic screener, is currently on trial at Gold Kist's poultry processing plant.
The systemic screener is installed near the front end of the chicken-processing line where cameras look for defects such as improperly bled birds and those afflicted by systemic diseases, such as septicaemia and toxaemia.
Unique software and algorithms reportedly provide the intelligence for translating visual data from the system's cameras into the appropriate mechanical commands for dispensation of each chicken. Those that pass the screening proceed to the next step, while unfit chickens are quickly and automatically removed from the processing line.
'It's a vision-based, closed-loop inspection and removal system - one of the first of its kind,' said Craig Wyvill, chief of the Food Processing Technology Division in the Electro-Optics, Environment and Materials Laboratory of GTRI.
By removing unacceptable birds early in the operation, the systemic screener allows subsequent areas of the plant to have higher utilisation of the processing line, he noted.
While poultry processing is already highly automated, it still depends heavily on manual processes, many of which are visually based.
'From beginning to end, live bird to the shrink-wrapped package, there are places where visual input is required to properly process the product,' said Wayne Daley, senior research engineer at GTRI and head of the development team. 'We're looking at where we can apply machine vision technology, what would be required, and how we can modify our system to run tests and see how it functions.'
Even many of the inspections required by law under the authority of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) may be conducted with machine vision, noted Daley.
Daley and his GTRI team started work in the area in the mid-1980s. At the time, the Agriculture Department was sponsoring a project to augment its on-line inspectors with computer technologies. A key focus of the project was to generate a consistent, objective and definable performance standard.
The initial system was fairly expensive, but advances in camera and computing technology have brought the cost down considerably, Wyvill noted.
