Development and validation of robotic cleaning system for fish processing plants

Abstract

Abstract-This paper presents the development of a robotic cleaning solution for fish processing plant. The project is currently at the stage of a first prototype consisting of a serial manipulator, a vertical linear axis and a rotational axis for the vertical axis. The purpose of the prototype is to validate the cleaning quality of a robotic cleaning solution. A cleaning solution will have to spray equipment and machines in the processing plant with chemicals and water to remove fish residue and bacterias, and special design considerations have to be taken with regards to water proofing and corrosion resistance. In order to validate such a system, a cleaning test were performed on an electric stunner, a machine typically found in salmon slaughterhouses. Results from the cleaning test shows that robotic cleaning of fish processing equipment can deliver an acceptable cleaning result. However, several issues related to making a system that can clean a whole plant still exists. Further work will require the development of a custom serial manipulator and a custom linear axis for navigating the manipulatorThe main purpose of this research is to present design considerations and investigate the validity of a robotic cleaning solution aimed at fish processing plants. This research is at TRL 5 and will enable further work with robotizing cleaning in challenging areas.

Experimental study of effectiveness of robotic cleaning for fish-processing plants

“…However, to the knowledge of the present authors, there are no research works in the literature focused on robotic cleaning for fish processing plants. Conventional robotic manipulator designs do not fulfill the requirements of a robotic cleaning system for fish processing plants (Bjørlykhaug, Giske, Løvdal, Mork, & Egeland, 2017). Several aspects of the robotic design deserve extra attention for a robotic cleaning system focused on fish processing plants.…”

“…Our novel contribution documents that such a system can deliver satisfactory results, enabling this technology to be implemented in the industry. This work is an extension of the work conducted in Bjørlykhaug et al (2017). The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: First, the two robot systems are presented in Section 2.…”

“…This system was manually programmed "online", jogging the robot from point to point and creating a cleaning path. An overview of the architecture can be seen in Bjørlykhaug et al (2017).…”

“…Regarding the methodology for Experiment 1, we refer to Bjørlykhaug et al (2017). The robot in action during Experiment 1 is shown in Figure 10.…”

“…The electric stunner and conveyor were inoculated, as seen in Figure 11, with a bacterial suspension cocktail of Pseudomonas fluorescens MF05002 (Trond Møretrø et al, 2016), Pseudomonas putida ATCC 49128 from the American Type Culture Collection, and Photobacterium phosphoreum CCUG 16288 from the Culture Collection University of Gothenburg. Bacteria cultivation, inoculation, and sampling were performed as previously described (Bjørlykhaug et al, 2017), with only minor modifications. All bacteria were initially grown separately to a stationary phase at 30 °C and 150 rpm in a shaking incubator in a tryptic soy broth with 0.6% of yeast extract (TSBYE; Oxoid).…”