Ever wondered how your favorite foods keep their delicious taste and look? From pizza boxes to chocolate molds, machine vision technology is the silent hero behind top-notch quality and consistency across multiple industries. Let's explore some of the most exciting and unexpected applications of this innovative technology.

Food in the Factory

In the food and beverage industry, the need to consistently deliver high-quality products is driven both by consumers and regulatory agencies.

In particular, meat and poultry processors work hard to maintain their brand image and follow regulations, and as a result they take great strides to perform comprehensive end-to-end inspections. That includes everything from checking quality of incoming meat and poultry from the farms, to ensuring case packs of finished product are properly closed and labeled and various steps in between.

Let's walk through some unique ways the meat processing industry and food & beverage industry have been impacted by our systems.

An In-Sight camera inspecting meat packaging on a conveyor belt.

• Chicken or turkey inspection/grading: These systems can detect missing legs or wings on poultry, and any tearing or bruising, making sure proper standards for freshness are met. The cameras in these systems can also identify different colors of poultry, to account for visual appeal, or even catch discolored or suspicious-looking meat.
• Volumizing meat for cooking prior to packaging: These solutions make sure each product meets exact size requirements for consistency, and go through specific steps to make sure every cut undergoes an even cooking process before packaging.
• Seal and label inspection:To help with meat freshness, systems can inspect absorbent pads and verify labels, making sure every package is labeled correctly. They help to make sure everything is properly protected, sealed, labeled, and meets safety standards.
• Classifying meat for sorting: Poultry or beef cuts can be accurately identified and classified, ensuring that each piece is sorted accordingly at high speeds. The system's sensors categorize each cut, saving time and resources.

Beyond meat and poultry inspections, we've seen Cognex systems being used in other food and beverage applications as well:

Pizza box identification with In-Sight 2800

When it comes to the fast-paced food and beverage industry, inventory management is very important. For one use case, the In-Sight 2800could handle the process by identifying and tracking pizza boxes, ensuring that pizzerias are properly stocked and ready to package delicious pizzas.

Donut check with In-Sight 2800

For any retail food products, it's important to make sure they are presented and packaged properly. We heard from one customer who uses the In-Sight 2800 to perform a "donut check." It verifies the proper orientation and correct alignment of donuts in boxes. That helps them improve product quality and visual appeal: donuts that taste good and look good!

Two In-Sight cameras scanning lollipops on a turntable.

Lollipop classification with edge learning

In another use case, the In-Sight 3800, equipped with edge learning AI intelligence, classifies different lollipops. It can accurately identify and categorize different variations in these lollipops like color, and shape, and spots any malformed or disfigured lollipops to provide safe and tasty treats.

Chocolate mold check

When making high-quality chocolates, another customer used the In-Sight SnAPPsensor to identify problems with the molds used to form their candies. It inspected the molds for any missfills or obstructions, and could find defects from any orientation, making sure the molds were ready for the chocolate-making process.

Coffee ball inspection

When it comes to coffee, detecting defects during inspection is very important for meeting health and safety standards in production. The In-Sight SnAPP is up to the task: in one case, it was able to identify and inspect coffee balls for cracks, helping the manufacturer meet their very high quality coffee standards.

Bonus Applications

The food and beverage industry doesn't have a total lock on interesting applications. Here are some others that surprised us.

Dog tag data reading

Helping to aid the military - one of our solutions was used to read and identify intricate identification data on dog tags accurately. This technology helps to make sure sensitive IDs and information get into the right hands of those who serve.

Wheel identification

In the automotive industry, parts have to be identified and inspected to meet the many quality standards in place. In one application, our smart cameras were able to read important details displayed on the top of metallic wheels, reading IDs and recognizing specific characters. This made sure that each wheel met the correct safety and performance specifications before it was shipped to a customer.

The In-Sight Vision Software detecting an Ultra Pure White background.

Color shade detection

Our systems have been used to help with precise color shade detection, to correctly identify different shades of color on a manufacturing line. In this example, the solution was able to identify pure white backgrounds, helping to correctly categorize swatches and optimize the ID process.

Foreign object detection

In manufacturing environments, identifying foreign objects on a product line is important for maintaining product quality and safety. Our systems can accurately identify many different variations of foreign objects that might appear and interfere in the inspection process. In one unusual case, our products needed to identify leaves that snuck into a production line and remove them from the process.

Where's Waldo identification

Imagine a world where Waldo can be found in the blink of an eye! Our cameras' software has advanced facial recognition algorithms that can quickly identify Waldo in his pictures. While you could probably make the case that using machine vision to find Waldo takes a little of the fun out of the popular book series, we like to think that the AI gets to have a little fun, too.

Thinking outside-the-box

As shown by the variety of these special applications, vision systems can be used in innovative ways to develop systems and solutions for all sorts of unique situations. With the continued evolution of our technology, Cognex will continue to create out-of-the-box innovations for all kinds of out-of-the-box applications.

cgnx_pdfFood and Beverages Solutions Guide

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