AI-based robotic potato sorter improves product grading

Fresh-pack potato processors struggle to find workers for the final inspection of potato sorting and grading. Even when sheds can adequately staff, defects still reach customers, and acceptable potatoes are wasted. A new robotic sorter from Smart Visions Works can automate final inspection, ensuring accurate grading, increasing profits, and allowing managers to redeploy scarce workers to other tasks.

The SiftAI Robotic Sorter combines a delta robot with an AI-based vision inspection system. Each system is programmed with AI models for overall potato size and shape or presence of defects like bruises, cracks, percent green, and other cosmetic features. Installed over a roller table, the SiftAI cameras collect images of all sides of the potato. For any potatoes that grade outside the AI model's acceptance criteria, the system triggers the robotic arm to pick up and remove the potato from the product stream at rates between 80-100 picks per minute with two-robot system configurations. The SiftAI Robotic Sorter inspects potatoes with the same dexterity and speed as a human inspector but with much higher accuracy that increases profitability and reduces customer chargebacks.

Currently, the industry goal is to have no more than 5% of defective potatoes reaching customers, which is the limit set by the US Department of Agriculture. What's more, human inspectors typically discard 10 to 20% of acceptable potatoes, reducing profits. In beta testing, the new AI-enabled robotic sorter dramatically reduced the percentage of missed defects and misgraded potatoes.

Adding increased profitability to the labor savings, the financial impact of automation is significant. The investment pays for itself in fewer than two years.

"Because of potato oversupply and rising wages in North America, many potato processors are losing money on every box shipped," said Curtis Koelling, vice president of product development and innovation for Smart Vision Works, a KPM Analytics brand. "Managers are eager to identify technology that can lower their production costs," he said. "When they see a competitor managing final inspection without labor costs, they become very interested in the technology."

Advanced AI technology

The system's high accuracy is possible because its technology is not like the basic AI commonly used by other vision inspection systems. Instead, the system uses AI built on 12 years of development by AI scientists and years of experience in the potato industry. Unlike systems that use optical scanners, the SiftAI system takes a full digital image and runs it through a neural network.