Organizational Unit:

Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM)

Permanent Link

https://hdl.handle.net/1853/70657

Includes Organization(s)

Organizational Unit

Biorobotics and Human Modeling Lab

Organizational Unit

Humanoid Robotics Laboratory

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 11

Kinematics and Verification of a Deboning Device

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-08) Zhou, Debao ; Daley, Wayne ; McMurray, Gary

Poultry deboning process is one of the largest employers in the United States and mainly involves human workers due to the unstructured nature of the task. For the automation of this process, a cutting device with the adaptive capability has been developed. In this paper, we focused on the kinematics of this device and the accuracy of the actual cutting point location. We validated the kinematic formulation and proofed the confidence of the accurate cutting. The applied verification method can be generalized to be applicable to general kinematics verification.
Intelligent Cutting of the Bird Shoulder Joint

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009) Hu, Ai-Ping ; Grullon, Sergio ; Zhou, Debao ; Holmes, Jonathan ; Holcombe, Wiley ; Daley, Wayne ; McMurray, Gary

Deboning operations are one of the largest users of on-line labor in today’s poultry plants. Efforts have been made over the years to automate this function, but to date have achieved only limited success. The main difficulty in this task is its unstructured nature due to the natural variability in the sizes of birds and their deformable bodies. To increase product safety and quality, the industry is looking to robotics to help solve these problems. This research has focused on developing a new method of automating the deboning of bird front halves. If this task can be automated, the technology would naturally be extended to other cuts and trimming operations in poultry and red meat. To accomplish this goal, the project team has been working for the past four years on the development of a sensor-based intelligent cutting system. This work is based on the development of a model for the cutting of bio-materials that can be extended to the cutting of meat, tendon, ligaments, and bone. When this model is combined with data from the tendon prediction system, the nominal cutting trajectory can be established and adjusted based on the cutting model in conjunction with knowledge of the bird's anatomy. The value in accomplishing this work would be to not only reduce labor costs but also to increase the yield of breast meat and reduce/eliminate bone chips. It is estimated that an increase in yield of a single percentage point could represent several millions of dollars of additional revenue for each and every plant. Current attempts at automation of the shoulder cut impose several percentage points of yield loss in return for lower labor costs. In the manual process, while generally providing a higher yield of breast meat, the quality of the product varies dramatically based on the skill of the worker, and the labor costs are significantly higher. It is the goal of this work to develop a system that eliminates labor and consistently provides a yield similar to the best manual worker. The overall vision for this project requires the development of various technology components that will be unified into a single operational system. This includes a system to identify the initial cutting point, a system to specify the nominal cutting trajectory based on the size of that specific bird, a model to predict the location of the joint and shoulder tendons given the position/orientation of the wing tip, a mathematical model of the cutting process that allows the control system to interpret force/torque data and make intelligent motion commands to avoid cutting through the bone, and a robotic platform capable of executing these commands in real-time.
The System Engineering and Test (TSET) Approach for Unprecedented Systems

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009) Weiss, Lora G. ; Roberts, Rusty ; Cross, Stephen E.

The rapid pace of development of new systems coupled with a strong desire from warfighters to quickly field systems with advanced technologies and innovation poses new Test and Evaluation (T&E) challenges. These challenges start with the realization that most T&E procedures are derived from a historical, requirements-based approach to acquisition, which inherently is a sequential process. For innovative and unprecedented systems, i.e., the kind of system for which there is no experience in building similar systems or in their test or use, T&E cannot follow a sequential approach. Throughout military history, development of unprecedented systems has occurred when there has been a simultaneous advance in technology and operational need such as is occurring now in the domain of unmanned systems. T&E needs to evolve to be integrated with the development process. Waiting for the results of developmental and operational testing will only exacerbate the delay in rapidly fielding advanced capabilities. This article presents the tenets of using the system engineering and test approach for evaluating unprecedented systems and moving testing to the forefront of the system development process.
Automation of the Bird Shoulder Joint Deboning

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-09) Zhou, Debao ; Holmes, Jonathan ; Holcombe, Wiley ; McMurray, Gary

Poultry deboning processing is one of the largest employers of people in the United States. It involves mainly manual processes with only limited use of fixed automation. The main difficulty in this task is the unstructured nature of the task due to the natural variability of birds’ size and deformable bodies. To increase product safety and quality, the industry is looking to robotics to help solve these problems. This research has focused on automating cutting of bird front halves. The anatomic structure of the chicken shoulder joint was studied first. Thus the cutting locations on chicken front halves were identified. In conjunction with force control robotics, a 3-DOF device with the capability for size adaptation and deformation compensation was proposed and the cutting trajectory was simulated. The results of the dynamic simulation verified that the desired trajectory can be followed and the response time for bone detection can be satisfied. A functional prototype of this device has been built and is currently under evaluation.
Automation of Bird Front Half Deboning Procedure: Design and Analysis

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-06) Zhou, Debao ; Holmes, Jonathan ; Holcombe, Wiley ; Lee, Kok-Meng ; McMurray, Gary

Bio -material cutting, such as meat deboning, is one of the most common operations in the food processing industry. It is also the largest employer of people in the United States. These tasks are currently manual processes with only limited use of fixed automation. The main difficulty in this task is the natural variability of the product's size and individual anatomy. The industry is looking to robotics to help solve these problems. This research has focused on automating the cutting of chicken front halves to obtain high quality breast meat. In order to specify the cutting locations and cutting trajectories on chicken front halves, in this paper, the anatomy structure of the chicken shoulder joint was studied first. Then a 2-DOF cutting mechanism was proposed. Through the formulation of the kinematics and dynamics of the mechanism, the cutting trajectory was simulated. Pneumatic actuators with position feedback sensors were selected as the driven system. To verify whether the pneumatic driving system could satisfy the trajectory following requirements (speed and response time), experiments were carried out. The results show that the pneumatics driven system can marginally follow the desired trajectory with enough speed for the adaptation motion. The device will be built and tested in our future research.
Cutting, ‘by Pressing and Slicing’, Applied to Robotic Cutting Bio-materials, Part I: Modeling of Stress Distribution

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-05) Zhou, Debao ; Claffee, Mark R. ; Lee, Kok-Meng ; McMurray, Gary V.

Bio-material cutting, such as meat deboning, is one the most common operations in food processing. Automating this process using robotic devices with closed-loop force control has shown some promise. The control of the force trajectory directly relates to the internal stress in the material being cut, and must provide enough force to initiate the cut. The ability to model the stress distribution in the bio-materials being cut would provide a better understanding of the influencing factors and help predict the required cutting force for the design of the cutting mechanism and for automating the cutting operations. This research is presented in two parts: part I models the stress distribution when a blade acts on the bio-material and part II discusses the principles of biomaterial cutting. Starting with modeling a point force in the normal and tangential direction on the boundary of a semi -infinite body, an analytical expression for the stress tensor has been obtained and simulated using direct integral method. This paper provides the theoretical basis for explaining the cutting phenomena and predicting the cutting forces, a topic to be presented in Part II.
Cutting, ‘by Pressing and Slicing’, Applied to the Robotic Cut of Bio-materials, Part II: Force during Slicing and Pressing Cuts

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-05) Zhou, Debao ; Claffee, Mark R. ; Lee, Kok-Meng ; McMurray, Gary V.

The applications of robotics are becoming more and more common in non-traditional industries such as the medical industry including robotic surgery and sample microtoming as well as food industry that include the processing of meats, fruits and vegetables. In this paper, the influence of the blade edgeshape and its slicing angle on the cutting of biomaterials are formulated and discussed based on the stress analysis that has been presented in Part I. Through modeling the cutting force, an optimal slicing angle can be formulated to maximize the feed rate while minimizing the cutting forces. Moreover, the method offers a means to predict cutting forces between the blade and the biomaterials, and a basis for design of robust force control algorithms for automating the cutting of biomaterials.
Uncalibrated Dynamic Visual Servoing

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2004-02) Piepmeier, Jenelle Armstrong ; McMurray, Gary V. ; Lipkin, Harvey

A dynamic quasi-Newton method for uncalibrated, vision-guided robotic tracking control with fixed imaging is developed and demonstrated. This method does not require calibrated kinematic and camera models. Robotic control is achieved at each step through minimizing a nonlinear objective function by taking quasi-Newton steps and estimating the composite Jacobian at each step. The Jacobian is estimated using a dynamic recursive least squares algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate the validity of this approach.
Uncalibrated Eye-in-Hand Visual Servoing

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2003-10) Piepmeier, Jenelle Armstrong ; Lipkin, Harvey

In this paper we present new uncalibrated control schemes for vision-guided robotic tracking of a moving target using a moving camera. These control methods are applied to an uncalibrated robotic system with eye-in-hand visual feedback. Without a priori knowledge of the robot’s kinematic model or camera calibration, the system is able to track a moving object through a variety of motions and maintain the object’s image features in a desired position in the image plane. These control schemes estimate the system Jacobian as well as changes in target features due to target motion. Four novel strategies are simulated and a variety of parameters are investigated with respect to performance. Simulation results suggest that a Gauss–Newton method utilizing a partitioned Broyden’s method for model estimation provides the best steady-state tracking behavior.
Uncalibrated Eye-in-Hand Visual Servoing

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2002-05) Piepmeier, Jenelle Armstrong ; Gumpert, Ben A. ; Lipkin, Harvey

This paper presents uncalibrated control schemes for vision-guided robotic tracking of a moving target using a moving camera. These control methods are applied to an uncalibrated robotic system with eye-in-hand visual feedback. Without a priori knowledge of the robot's kinematic model or camera calibration, the system is able to track a moving object and maintain the desired features. These control schemes estimate the system Jacobian as well as changes in target features due to target motion. Four novel strategies are simulated, and a variety of parameters are investigated with respect to performance.