Robofish-a new robot system for handling fresh cod

This paper describes work conducted under a European Commission ESPRIT project entitled Intelligent Sensor Controlled Robots for Fast Integrated Handling of Fresh Fish-also called Robofish. The aim of the project was to design and build a robot that was generally suitable for the food environment and specifically to meet the exacting requirements of grasping 1-6 kg white fish from a moving conveyor and transferring the grasped fish to a deheading machine such as to maximise yield, at a rate of one fish every two seconds. The paper describes this process and focuses on the novel elements of the design of the manipulator, the end-effector and the sensors. The system has now been tested extensively in an Icelandic fish factory.