Robotic potato handling for Tesco

Citation

(2002), "Robotic potato handling for Tesco", Industrial Robot, Vol. 29 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2002.04929aaf.004

Robotic potato handling for Tesco

Keywords: Robotics, Handling

Robotic packing has replaced the back-breaking job of filling stillages manually at the Lincoln plant of Branston Potatoes, a supplier of fresh produce exclusively to the Tesco supermarket chain. The installation was configured by Herbert Engineering, a system integrator appointed for the fresh food sector by the robot supplier, Motoman (Plate 6).

Said Nick Herbert, Joint Managing Director in charge of the installation, “With health and safety issues very much to the fore these days, employers have to be careful not to deploy people on tasks which may cause injury, such as those involving repetitive handling of relatively heavy loads in awkward positions. It is also increasingly difficult to find staff willing to do these jobs”.

Plate 6 Picture shows one of the Motoman robits fitted with a special Herbert Engineering, gripper head picking bags of potatoes from a conveyor and stacking them into an MU stillage for delivery to Tesco

Automating the handling of bags of potatoes and stacking them into so-called MU stillages for delivery to the point of sale in Tesco stores is an ideal application for robots. The Lincoln installation is based on two Motoman UP-50 six-axis robots each capable of picking up three 2.5 kg bags or two 5 kg bags of produce and placing 80 or 40 of them respectively into a stillage.

Apart from automating and speeding this arduous job, an additional advantage is elimination of damage to the potatoes through mis-handling and hence fewer returns, as the robots repeatedly and unerringly place the bags gently into the MU from a maximum drop height of 25 mm. It would be unrealistic to expect a person to be so careful over a full shift.

The stillages are angled at five degrees to the horizontal to prevent bags from rolling around and to assist in building a neat stack which is stable during transportation. When the stillage is full, another is automatically indexed into the filling station and the first is taken away for despatch.

Herbert Engineering's involvement in the project starts at the packing machine where bags are orientated in the same direction after twist-sealing. They then pass through a series of bends and accumulate before entering a picking conveyor.

At the far end of the conveyor, a lift table separates two or three bags, according to weight, and presents them to a pneumatic gripper designed by Herbert Engineering mounted on the wrist of each articulated-arm robot. The bags of potatoes are clamped horizontally and at the same time a row of tines support the load from underneath by passing through the conveyor via the spaces between the rollers.

Thus secured, the load is transferred safely to the MU stillage at the rate of 35 packs per minute for the 2.5 kg bags, 30 per minute for the 5 kg bags. As two robots work in tandem, throughput is double these figures.

Herbert Engineering previously supplied a single Motoman palletising robot to Branston Potatoes' Somerset site to further automate the customer's potato handling there.

Contact: John D'Angelillo, Managing Director, Motoman Robotics (UK) Ltd, 1 Swan Industrial Estate, Banbury, Oxfordshire OX16 8DJ, UK. Tel: 01295 272755; Fax: 01295 267127; E-mail: johnd'angelillo@motoman.co.uk; Web site: http://www. motoman.se