Soft peristaltic actuation for the harvesting of ovine offal

Abstract

Many tasks in lamb meat processing have been automated by mechatronic systems during the past years. However, the extraction of edible organs from the unordered organ package has remained a challenge. Traditional sensing methods and hard robotic effectors are not suitable for the slippery and deformable tissue in varying geometric constellations. In this paper, we propose a soft peristaltic method to bring the organ package into the optimal configuration for the removal of single organs. We give a system overview, discuss its viability, and point out the challenges in its implementation. A deformable xy-sorting table is proposed to order the organ package. By producing moving wave shapes on its surface, the table changes the geometric configuration of the organs as perceived and controlled by a machine vision module. When an organ is in the optimal position, it is picked up and removed by traditional robotic solutions.