Analyzing Human Robotic Interaction in the Food Industry

Abstract The food chain from farmer to fork has grown into a very complex sector. Industrial robots are being integrated in every part of the food chain in order to increase production, create a higher quality product to exceed customer expectations. As the bar on quality standards raises higher year on year, food safety and hygiene becomes an even greater priority and customer’s demands value for money. Food manufacturing robots are used all aspects of the food chain. Although the food sector is slow to adapt robots, the Food sector is the fourth most automatable sector. Robots are used for farming, transport, food production, packaging and delivering. 1 Robots are especially convenient for packaging of food items, where speed, consistency or high levels of repetition are needed. Robots usually win over humans in terms of efficiency and accuracy. The latest robots are equipped with intelligent vision, can multi- task and understand verbal commands. More businesses see the value in automation especially robotics which plays a vital role in process improvement. A smaller minority is still hesitant, sees it as a threat to their business, and is reluctant to implement robots. They argue that it will reduce jobs and employees will lose their valuable skills. The purpose of this paper is to identify, analyze and understand robotics in one of the largest sectors, the food chain.