One of the growing market segment of the bakery industry is the production of buns and other rolls for fast-food restaurants. Now, research engineers from the Georgia Institute of Technology are working with bakers from Flowers Bakery on a machine vision-based approach in a quest to produce perfect buns.
The first phase of the work is introducing continuous imaging technology to the large-scale production of sandwich buns for fast-food restaurants, which hold to exacting product specifications.
The fresh-baked buns are scanned by a digital camera as they move along Flowers' production line. Items not measuring up in terms of color, shape, seed distribution, size or other criteria are identified by the computerized eye's imaging software and eventually removed automatically from the conveyor.
Below is a picture of the automated product-inspection prototype used to catch poor-quality sandwich buns (Credit: Georgia Tech).
The project is not limited to the production of better buns. It also will lead to better supervisory control systems which may be adapted to other food industries.
The second phase of the project will extend automation by providing in-line mechanisms to correct the vagaries leading to poor-quality products. Proofers and ovens -- the heat- and humidity-controlled chambers where dough is sent to rise and bake -- are subject to normal disturbances that can affect product quality. Automatically compensating for those disturbances reduces time spent correcting problems.
You can find additional details on the project on this page.
But as says a professor from Georgia Tech, "Baking is both a science and an art." So be sure I'll always prefer an imperfect loaf of fresh french bread to a perfect industrialized bun.
Source: Gary Goettling, Georgia Institute of Technology, via EurekAlert!, November 25, 2003
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