A novel, flexible, multi-functional handling device based on Bernoulli Principle

Sam, R

Abstract

Food handling sector in food industry has increased rapidly over the last years. A higher
production rate together with continuously growing product assortments put new re-
quirements for the food producers such as improving production efficiency, working
conditions, enhancing hygiene standards, and impacting on yield margins and prof-
itability. Food industry has been identified as a major growth area for the application of
automation systems. Therefore, handling devices or robot grippers have been adopted
as a solution for the manual handling operations and automation in order to achieve the
requirements mentioned above.
However, most of these grippers yet been used in industry or proposed in the literature
are specifically designed for dedicated tasks, and could not be revised for other forms,
size and heavy load conditions. Consequently, the inflexibility of the grippers available
today is limiting the use of robots in the food industry. Recently, various flexible grip-
per designs have been proposed to overcome these weaknesses; however, they present
several drawbacks: (1)- their applications are limited, (2)- their maintenance and the
material used for their design are cost prohibitive and (3)- they usually consume a lot of
energy.
The aim of this research is to develop a novel and universal gripper for handling food
products. The main characteristics of the gripper are flexible, durable, cost-effective,
easy to operate and maintain, and energy-efficient. The proposed multi-functional grip-
per aided with four fingers for handling different mechanical properties of unpacked
food products. The gripper operates using Bernoulli principle of generating a high-
speed flow between the gripper plate and product surface thereby creating a vacuum
which lifts the product. A pick and place workstation with multi-functional gripper has
been developed and tested. The outcome of the evaluation concluded that the research
had achieved its aims.

Citation

Sam, R. A novel, flexible, multi-functional handling device based on Bernoulli Principle. (Thesis). Salford : University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Oct 3, 2012
• Award Date: Jan 1, 2010