Butchering meat is an art that requires some skill not to mention dexterity to keep all of your fingers intact. It seems that robots are invading this market and taking up the jobs as well, not to mention ‘boning up’ on their knife wielding skills for future engagements against their human masters. Case in point: the HAMDAS-R ham boning robot developed by Mayekawa Electric. Unbeknownst to me; it takes 20 people to de-bone 500 hams per hour, and that’s on a good ‘boning’ day, while the HAMDAS-R robot can do it with only 10 other people to help out. The robot was developed as part of an assembly line food service unit that helps eliminate contamination that comes with the human touch. A representative of Mayekawa says that, “HAMDAS-R has made it possible to automate the processing of irregularly shaped, soft foods like meat. Until now, the use of robots for food processing hasn't progressed very much. That's because it's necessary to mechanize the techniques of skilled workers, and it's hard to mechanize tasks that rely on human hands. Another problem was that the cleaning and hygiene requirements of food processing plants made it difficult to introduce robots into such an environment. Until now, very little progress had been made in that regard, but HAMDAS-R enables those requirements to be met. So we hope this robot will expand the possibilities for automating the processing of irregularly shaped, soft types of food." See the HAMDAS-R robot in action : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrVFcqgHSLQ
Dig