Watt Global Media

Ai-Ping Hu

Title

Senior research engineer

Company

Georgia Tech Research Institute

Presented by

Presentation description:

Technology presentation
Intelligent robotics for poultry deboning

Second- and further-processing operations constitute the largest use of on-the-line labor in today’s poultry processing plants. This presentation describes continuing work at the Georgia Tech Research Institute in the intelligent automation of bird deboning, a task that is conceptualized into three parts: characterizing the non-uniform bird product (using 3D image processing), predicting anatomical structure (i.e., the shoulder joint) and obtaining an optimal cutting path (for the robot to execute to extract the most yield from the bird carcass). Results from deboning experiments using a prototype developed to perform bird shoulder cuts are presented.

Experience:

Ai-Ping Hu, Ph.D., is a senior research engineer in Georgia Tech Research Institute’s Food Processing Technology Division. He received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University and Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He worked at a start-up robotics company for a number of years before joining GTRI in 2009. His research interests include advanced controls for unstructured environments and agricultural robotics. Recent projects include a robot that cuts chicken, a swinging robot (nicknamed “Tarzan”) for crop phenotyping and soft robot grippers for fruit picking.