Automated Handling and Feeding Techniques for Skewering Operations

Authors: JING, LI - Mississippi State University; LYU, JIAQI - Stevens Institute Of Technology; LIU, WENBO - Mississippi State University; YAO, TIANQI - Mississippi State University; CAO, YUPENG - Stevens Institute Of Technology; LU, YUZHEN - Michigan State University; ZHANG, XIN - Mississippi State University

Submitted to: Proceedings of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers International (ASABE)
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/19/2024
Publication Date: 6/24/2024
Citation: Jing, L., Lyu, J., Liu, W., Yao, T., Cao, Y., Lu, Y., Zhang, X. 2024. Automated Handling and Feeding Techniques for Skewering Operations. Proceedings of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers International (ASABE). 67(5)1181-1190. https://doi.org/10.13031/ja.15940.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13031/ja.15940

Interpretive Summary: Barbecue kebabs, typically made with a mix of meats and vegetables, are popular worldwide but traditionally require a labor-intensive and time-consuming manual assembly process. While some automation exists, current semi-automatic and fully automatic machines still depend heavily on manual input or have significant limitations. For example, semi-automatic systems require workers to manually align or stack ingredients before skewering, and existing fully automated systems struggle with irregularly shaped items or frequently leave ingredient cups empty. This study introduces a new fully automated handling and feeding system that enables true unattended kebab production, including for irregular items like shrimp. The system is the first to use a horizontal skewering design that accommodates both cube-shaped and C-shaped ingredients. It successfully integrates singulation, handling, and feeding operations with different foods and settings. This advancement represents a major step forward in improving efficiency and flexibility in kebab production, with broad potential for the meat and seafood processing industry.

Technical Abstract: Barbecue kebab skewers typically consist of various meat choices, including chicken, lamb, pork, or seafood, and vegetables such as onion and pepper. Traditionally, manual kebab-making is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process, which is considered to be replaced by semi-auto and full-auto skewering machines. Currently, semi-auto skewering machines still require two main manual preparation processes: align the small meat and vegetable pieces into lines for skewering operations; superpose the large pieces of meat and vegetables, then do skewering and cutting operations. Fully automated skewering machines also have two different strategies. The first one is to use rotating scrappers and cups with a respective depth to ensure only one item can be loaded into each cup. All the cups are arranged into sequential cup rows and cup lines for skewering operations. However, the cups are frequently left empty because the rotating scrapper design often blocks any items falling into cups. Thus, some processing facilities still need extra labor to manually fill these empty cups. Another solution is the pick-and-place method by using robot arms and real-time image processing equipment, which cannot process irregular food pieces, such as shrimps (C-shape). In this paper, a novel fully automated handling and feeding system has been developed to prepare and connect the skewering operations to establish unattended kebab production lines.The performances of singulation, handling, and feeding operations have been investigated with different parameter settings and food items. Besides, the presented machine system is the first realization of unattended kebab production lines to process shrimps (C-shape), and the first design of using horizontal skewering operation to produce meat and vegetable kebabs (cube+ square piece) and shrimp and vegetable kebabs (C-shape+ square piece). This study will be beneficial for developing more effective next-generation skewering technologies and better value-added meat and seafood products.