Recipient Organization
MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIV
(N/A)
MISSISSIPPI STATE,MS 39762
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Barbecue kebab skewers consist of various meat choices including chicken, lamb, pork or seafood, and vegetables such as onion and pepper. Traditionally, manual kebab-making is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process, and semi-auto kebab production systems also require two manual processes: align the small meat and vegetable pieces into lines for skewering operations; superpose the large pieces of meat and vegetables then do skewering and cutting operations. Fully automated kebab production also has issues, like high manufacturing cost and high error rate. Additionally, as a common ingredient of kebab products, shrimp (C-shape) cannot be handled and fed by current production systems for skewering operations. In this project, a novel fully automated handling and feeding system for kebab production will be developed to prepare and connect the skewering operations to establish unattended kebab production lines. Multiple handling and feeding systems can be arranged to produce different kebabs with various meat, seafood, and vegetable combinations. A set of design theories, operation algorithms, and predictive models for optimizing the production efficiency will be developed for different production scales to fulfill the critical knowledge gaps regarding the singulation and alignment of different food items. With appropriate adjustments, this technology can be also applied to kebab production of all the U.S. meat and seafood species. It also opens up new opportunities and directions to rethink alternatives for other industries related to sorting and handling processes.
Animal Health Component
50%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
25%
Applied
50%
Developmental
25%
Goals / Objectives
Objective #1: Develop meat cube alignment robotic pick-and-place optimization solutions.Objective #2: Develop an automated handling and feeding platform for skewering operations.Objective #3: Assess the economic feasibility of the fully automated kebab handling and feeding machine.
Project Methods
We will model the handling operations (arranging food items into appropriate spots) as a robotic pick-and-place problem on moving conveyors. Instead of push movements, we will advance the handling flexibility by using vacuum air suction technique to do pick and place operations. The detection results (camera) will provide the coordinates of each meat cube and feed to the optimization algorithm. The pick-and-place actions take the consideration of four goals: 1) minimize the number of meat cubes to be moved, 2) minimize the total moving distance, 3) maximize the throughput of kebab production, and 4) minimize the error rate (the number of times any cups receive more than one item, but other cups don't receive any items simultaneously).A simulation model will be developed in Python to predict production performance (four goals mentioned above) with different production settings (conveyor speed and length, pick-and-place movement speed, batch size (Figure 1(a)), number of lanes, and number of air suction end-effectors). It will provide design guidelines for different production scales, and compare with real experiments. After that, we will perform Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II), which is a fast and elitist multi-objective genetic algorithm. The algorithm will be compared with existing commonly used greedy optimization approaches, such as First Come First Served (FCFS), and shortest processing time (SPT).To further advance the commercial potential and improve the kebab production flexibility, a multi handling and feeding production mode is to be developed to produce meat & vegetable kebabs (cube+ square piece) and shrimp & vegetable kebabs (C-shape+ square piece). Mass production tests with food safety regulation will be conducted in Tyson Foods' pilot plant. The proposed handling and feeding machine will be integrated with other meat production operations (cutting, skewering, breading, battering, individually quick-frozen (IQF), packaging, etc.).