Behold our robot future

Posted on July 2, 2016 by Fred Stiening

This video shows an automated factory that cuts up lambs in New Zealand. It is not for the squeamish

If you have an active imagination, it doesn’t take much to imagine a different mammal being chopped up. Soylant green is people!

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6 Responses to Behold our robot future

  1. Parrott says:
    July 4, 2016 at 8:24 pm

    You know that is clean. Everything is stainless steel. No one is spitting on the food or taking a big ol’ piss on the meat as it comes down the line.
    Interesting the laser measures the chunk of meat and cuts precise. No missing fingers.
    super accurate.
    That technology is very expensive, but it is heavy duty. A lot of cars are built this wy in Japan. It interesting to look at the precise welds on my ten year old Lexus IS350.
    Its a very nice car that has never once offered to drive off on its own. It was built with a lot of robots. Stepper motors can be precise.
    If the Burger King was like that meat plant, I may eat there,,,, Nah.
    I almost stopped at the K&W in Burlington NC this past weekend, but there was a line out the door so I kept going.
    Looked like a tour bus had stopped Friday evening.
    Parrott

    • Fred Stiening says:
      July 4, 2016 at 9:26 pm

      Time for my anecdotal story. After doing my time at Oldsmobile, I moved on to Buick City in Flint. It was GM’s half assed attempt to emulate Toyota City – Just in Time inventory management, any worker empowered to stop the line, use of robotics, etc.

      One of the innovations was using a robot to install the window glass. The first unexpected problem was it gets cold in Michigan. The glass first had to go to a warehouse to warm up. GM would not agree to make PPG a sole supplier, so they refused to build a glass plant next to the factory.

      The next problem was the robot randomly “missed” and broke the glass or froze (Don’t remember which). The robot used “vision” cameras to locate the position of the car to squirt the sealant and place the glass. Someone eventually noticed the pattern that the robot had trouble with cars painted blue. The blue cars were invisible to the camera and software. I’m not sure how that was resolved.

    • Fred Stiening says:
      July 4, 2016 at 9:34 pm

      With too much time on my hands, I’ve been watching a ton of “how it’s made” videos on YouTube. One common theme is widespread use of vision systems in food manufacturing. The most extreme was a system looking at grains of rice, but they are also used in potato chips (when did you last get a green potato chip?), kernels of corn, discolored fruit, etc. There is a another system that does a 3D measurement of salmon and computes exactly where to cut the filet so it is exactly the right weight and minimizing waste.

  2. briand75 says:
    July 5, 2016 at 5:53 pm

    I must admit – this is pretty grisly stuff. I have thought about being vegetarian before…

    • Fred Stiening says:
      July 5, 2016 at 6:42 pm

      On the other hand, in a lot of places, they whip out their knife, slit the throat and sit down to dinner. Sometimes they even use the knife on the lamb, too.

  3. Fred Stiening says:
    July 5, 2016 at 6:44 pm

    Near the end after it removes the legs, the robot just cavalierly tosses the remainder aside. Pretty heartless.

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