While not quite as envisioned in “I, Robot” or “The Jetsons,” robots are becoming increasingly common in food processing. The first robots were used for repetitive tasks such as palletizing skids, where they were not in direct contact with products. However, robots now are commonly being used for direct handling of foods, especially in ready-to-eat (RTE) applications such as pastries, handling cheese sticks, and snack chip processing. These may be simple “pick and place” robots, or they can be used for cutting and slicing, dispensing, or a variety of other automated tasks.
Manual handling of RTE foods creates a significant risk of contamination due to close contact with operator’s hands and clothing. Utilizing robots in these types of applications may reduce the risks of contamination by operators, but this creates other risks due to the design, operation, cleaning, and sanitizing of the robots. Yet, some robots have been designed to clean themselves and their surrounding frames.