Packaging inspection of all kinds of products is an application that is virtually predestined for industrial image processing. A particularly booming image processing market is food packaging - an area in which Kibele-PIMS is extremely successful: the Turkish company develops and implements turnkey systems for customers from all over the world, which are used to ship packaged food worldwide.

Kibele-PIMS has developed and commissioned two fully automated systems in Istanbul for the Unilever companies Knorr and Lipton, on which food is recognized, sorted and then stacked on pallets by robots. The larger of the two systems was realized for Knorr. Its task is to first recognize the soups, sauces and other company products delivered from production via a 27 m long conveyor belt and packaged in small batches according to their type and then to transport the identified product types to the respective assigned packing station. In this way, the cartons are distributed by type to 17 stations, where they are placed on pallets by three Kuka robots installed on linear axes and wrapped with adhesive film as soon as a pallet is fully loaded. Finished pallets are then prepared for collection by trucks via conveyor belts.

Using 19 cameras, Knorr foodstuffs can be identified in small cartons, sorted in 17 lines and prepared for transportation on individual pallets by three robots.

© Kibele-PIMS

Image processing systems play a decisive role in this application - the version for Knorr has a total of 19 cameras: at the start of each packing station, a camera reads barcodes on the cartons, which are used to classify the product type and assign it to the correct conveyor belt. At the same time, the incoming cartons are checked at this point for any damage to the packaging. Faulty cartons pass completely through the incoming conveyor belt and are collected at the end to be manually assessed and, if possible, repacked.

Sorting by image processing

After the robots have loaded the undamaged cartons onto the pallets, the finished pallets are transported past two additional cameras, which record the number of pallets, the expiry dates and again the type of product. This information is then sent to a labeling machine, which prints the corresponding transport labels, attaches them to the pallets and releases them for shipping.

When selecting the right cameras for this application, Kibele-PIMS opted for the 'Genie Nano M1920' area scan cameras from Teledyne Dalsa. This model met all the previously defined requirements in terms of resolution and speed.

All images from the Knorr line are analyzed using four industrial 'Geva 312T' image processing PCs and Teledyne Dalsa's 'Inspect' image processing software.

© Teledyne Dalsa

All images are analyzed on four industrial image processing PCs of the 'Geva 312T' type, which are equipped with the 'Inspect' image processing software, using products from the Canadian manufacturer. Three of these PCs process the images from the 17 cameras in the conveyor belt area, while the fourth calculates the data from the two cameras at the end of the Knorr line. The 'Geva 312T' workstations have an integrated touchscreen, which can also be used as a graphical user interface. Kibele-PIMS stores the complete data of the products and pallets on the PCs and thus has the option of generating a large number of reports at this point and forwarding them to the customer's servers if necessary.

Twelve cameras in use

Patrick Menge is Business Development Manager Europe Vision Systems at Teledyne Dalsa in Krailling, Germany.

© Teledyne Dalsa

About a year before the system for Knorr, Kibele-PIMS had developed and commissioned another system on which ten different types of tea from the manufacturer Lipton are pre-sorted and packaged. This variant is very similar to the Knorr system, but is somewhat smaller with ten lines, five robots from Universal Robots, twelve 'Genie Nano' cameras and three 'Geva 312T' workstations.

Kibele-PIMS is extremely satisfied with the results of both sorting lines: "Before switching to the fully automated solutions, the food was sorted manually, which was a very strenuous task. In the new setup, a carton arrives at the Knorr line every 1.5 seconds on average, and every 2 seconds at the Lipton line - compared to manual sorting, this means a significant increase in efficiency and considerably fewer errors in the correct packaging of the food.

The current systems are designed for large retailers who usually order complete pallets of a single type of food. Kibele-PIMS is currently working on systems that can pack different types of food on one pallet. This concept is more effective for smaller retailers as the order quantities can be smaller this way.