I’m kinda impressed they even bothered with a… I don’t even know it is a vision camera or just a distance measurement… to try to find the center of the bun. Considering the failure they should just make the bun hole bigger (mmm wording bad) and just yolo it without the extra attempt at precision
Right, if the bun hole was bigger there'd be less tolerance issues on slipping the meat in. Then they could inject some kind of creamy melted cheese to grout the meat in place so that when you're eating it it doesn't have issues slipping out.
Yeh… the mistake here is that they filled the hole with sauce at the start, which seems to have made the sausage a bit floppy and difficult to push into the hole
these are regular hot dog buns at gas stations and żabkas (convenience store chain) in poland, they're nowhere near as messy as American style hot dogs
Quite the opposite, it's the minimum change needed to prevent this specific fault condition, without having to change any of the rest of the setup, as it merely prevents the bun from moving to the sides, without interfering in any way with the intended operation.
Should see how vision camera read print and if the print is a weeee bit off they have to add a new image to compare it off of instead of teaching the deviations and variations.
Story time. A guy I know works for a robotics automation company. One day some sort of corporate butcher company hires them. They have a bunch of people that always need their knives correctly sharpened, so they employ several professional knife sharpeners full time to sit there sharpening knives all day. They want to replace these human sharpeners with machines that can go 24/7 sharpening knives, but they need them sharpened “right”. Easy peasy.
It took them years of development to get the process working reliably before they could ship it. When they did finally ship it, it was such a big deal that his company made one of the machines just for the office. Employees can bring in all of their own knives and have them professionally sharpened robotically.
See though that feels like an appropriate use of automation. Because if something goes wrong, it's not a customer getting a hotdog in a metal bin lol. It's also something that requires skill to do correctly and takes a while, unlike putting a hot dog in a bun hole which would have taken a human all of 15 seconds haha
Consistent and good quality professional sharpening every time? Nice.
But how does that work with different knives? Does it scans for edge and has special algorithms to sharpen all of the cutting surface? Idk i know nothing about robots.
Thats most automation challenges you come across. Easy stuff is done and done already, it's always the complicated problems that need solving.
In this case, I think a gripper on the bun stand could have saved the day. Though bagging it still seems doomed to failure. That kind of vacuum is not good enough for this. You need high enough flow that leaks dont matter.
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u/eraserhd 9d ago
Automating making hot dogs with a five axis robot arm and vision system is like trying to make a flying machine that flaps its wings.