Development of food sorting system using RGB-D image measurement

Abstract

Prepared foods and/or convenience store lunches have a short product cycle and are made up of various foodstuffs, so their manufactures have to rely on manual labors. Labor shortage has become apparent so that the robotic and automation system would be beneficial to save labor shortage and reduce tasks. The robot system is required to identify various foodstuffs instantly, and to pick up and transport them to a predetermined position of the container. This study reports on the development of various foodstuffs selection from RGB-D images without changing the sensor configuration, and picks up and transports the target foodstuffs using a robot hand suitable for each foodstuff.