At a visit to Prestage Foods of South Carolina a couple summers ago to get a look at its new state-of-the-art turkey processing facility, there were a few things that made a big impression on me. At a plant that could process up to 48,000 turkeys a day, it was fascinating to see the level of automation that the poultry processing industry has been able to achieve. With this automation, Prestage was able to employ 300 workers instead of 750.
But perhaps even more impressive were the workers that remained. Watching how expertly they positioned unwieldy turkey carcasses and sliced with perfection to create the most valuable cuts of the meat was a work to behold. It also speaks to how difficult it remains to automate more of the process that works day in and day out on this highly variable organism.
This is the world largely being addressed by the International Production & Processing Expo (IPPE). Still affectionately referred to by many as the Chicken Show, the January exhibition in Atlanta showcased an impressive array of technologies designed to process, inspect, analyze, and package chicken, turkey, pork, and other meats.
Unlike any number of gadgets and widgets that run down an assembly line at the same size, weight, color, and orientation day after day, the processing of soft, irregularly shaped cuts of meat is a different beast, so to speak. Any given chicken or turkey in the flock is subject to natural variations in size and weight, making outliers particularly difficult to process in an automated system.
That makes it that much more impressive to see some of the technologies on display at IPPE.
Making the Cut
Mayekawa's booth was one getting considerable attention as it showed off its robotic chicken and pork deboning machines. The TORIDAS, Mayekawa's first automated system for this task, debones whole chicken legs. Just load the whole leg in, and the machine will separate the bone from the meat at yields as high as that of manual deboning.
Also in the automated deboning realm are systems that debone the front half of poultry carcasses, chicken wings, and pork.
Stäubli, well known as a pioneer in hygienic robotic systems for the food industry, was showing off its own chicken cutting prowess at IPPE. In a live demo, Stäubli's six-axis TX2-90 HE robot displayed its ability to precisely handle raw chicken and perform fast and accurate cutting. The robot is also designed for hygienic and humid environments, meaning it eliminates bacterial contamination risks and can stand up to washdowns.
Specialized Inspection and Handling
Another TX2-90 HE was operating in Oxipital AI's booth, but in this case, it was demonstrating other capabilities: Oxipital AI's 3D vision and artificial intelligence (AI). In a demonstration of its VX2 Vision System, launched late last year at Pack Expo International, the robotic system exhibited high-speed, simultaneous picking and inspection of breaded chicken patties from bulk presentation.
Beyond the unpredictability of size and shape, other natural variables can affect how meat responds to mechanical processing, including muscle composition, fat content, and texture. And inconsistencies in defects such as bruises, broken bones, or infections can challenge automated sorting and grading systems.
But this is Oxipital AI's wheelhouse, another example being its Actionable Insights data analytics platform. Four inspection applications provided an interactive experience in the booth, including product grading inspection of chicken breasts for fat percentage and trim level.
Oxipital technologies were also on display in the EnSight Solutions booth, where the partners demonstrated raw chicken breast singulation and tray packing from bulk. At the Schmalz booth, they showed vision-guided robotic picking of chicken drumsticks.
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