Robotics for meat processing - from research to commercialisation

Over the last five years we have successfully researched, designed, developed and commercialised the world's first lamb and sheep dressing robots. Two have already been sold to commercial concerns. This has caused a paradigm shift in the way automation in meat processing can be viewed. In this paper we describe the lessons we have learned in robotic automation via projects in Y-cutting, ripdown, brisket clearing, opening cuts, handling of primal cuts and packing bagged meat pieces for lamb and sheep meat. All of these projects have been, or are about to be, trialed in operating plants processing export quality meat. These projects have involved the development of a programmable robot suitable for washdown environments, and of tooling to conduct specific dressing and handling tasks. Latest projects are applying this approach to automating certain beef processing tasks, and a beef processing robot has been constructed and is being installed for trials in an operating plant. The technology behind the robots is described and illustrated in our paper. Also described are the methods we used to ensure commercialisation was an economic success.