Food Magazine October 2017 | Page 21

SMART FOOD track all the temperatures , and make sure that all the mix water is clear of all the cleaners used to clean the tanks and pipes . That ’ s very sophisticated now - it ’ s manipulation of data . You can capture all the real-time data , put it into trends , put it into marketing material , and look at efficiencies , scheduling , that sort of thing .”

Sheppard cites , as an example , a new filling and carbonating line installed for Coca-Cola , where the data that was then available to its internal systems could streamline the profitability and change all the shift patterns , resulting in longer run times and shorter downtimes . “ Wireless is now the buzzword ,” continues Sheppard , “ and discrete components like a valve or an instrument will now have some wireless technology , so the maintenance and interrogation of the instrument is done remotely and without the need for cabling . You can be limited with the data you can get through a cable , but with wireless you can absolutely have all the data out of the instruments . If it is a quality issue then this can be tracked , and transparently traced .”

Back at the University of Lincoln , researchers are developing

– Professor Simon Pearson , Director of the Lincoln Institute of Agri-food Robotics ( LIAT )

soft robotic grasping tools and manipulators for the handling of food , creating state-of-the-art 3D vision systems for use in the automated robotic harvesting of vegetables and in robotic weeding technologies . They are also working with external partners to create the first ‘ robotic chef ’ to work on large-scale food production . Called APRIL , the robotic chef can mix , load and cook ingredients like a professional , human chef . However , it can do this on an industrial scale using modern cooking and material handling technologies . Its creators expect APRIL to transform the way food will be manufactured , very , very soon .

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