January 27, 2017

FTNON develops lettuce decoring machine

Food Technology Noord-Oost Nederland (FTNON) has issued a global release of its first robotic decoring machine for iceberg lettuce, the CoreTakr. The CoreTakr combines gripper technology with robot techniques, advanced software and 3D-cameras. According to FTNON the combination of these product features result in more productivity and efficiency, amongst a broad range of other advantages.

The CoreTakr is meant to be used at the beginning of production lines in the fresh cut industry. FTNON describes it as a highly intelligent device. Richard Van der Linde, director of FTNON Delft, describes it as the “sense–think–act” principle:

“First, the lettuce is scanned by five cameras that jointly give a peripheral scan of the product,” said van der Linde. “The images of the cameras are combined by a powerful computer into one spatial model to detect the core of the lettuce. In flight, a sixth camera verifies the core position, and adapts the lettuce position if required. After that, the lettuce is accurately placed into the decoring mechanism. With the innovative decoring knives, only the undesired part of the lettuce is then cut out.”

FTNON claims that the machine can decore up to 1,800 iceberg lettuce heads an hour, with a yield up to 96 percent.

 

“It produces up to a terabyte per unit of precious information hidden in that data. Most of it is related to various quality metrics,” Van der Linde said.

Andre van der Wei, managing director of the FTNON Group, states “we analyze and share the collected data with our customers. Accordingly, we can meet the standards of relative legislation to product traceability requirements. Therefore customers know exactly which products entered their production facility at what specific time.”

For more information on the CoreTakr, visit www.ftnon.com.





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