2-DIMENSIONAL MODELING OF PIG CARCASS SPINES FOR ROBOTIC EVISCERATION

State-of-the-art slaughter techniques are still mainly manual. A few a ttempts have recently been made to automate the primary pig slaughter process focussing on the partial processes before and after the evisce ration process. This paper deals with two-dimensional modelling of the spine of pig carcasses as a means of control of robotic evisceration of pigs by predicting the path needed to cut the connective tissue whi ch attaches the intestines to the spine. A generic model has been prod uced based on a representative sample of geometrical measurements of 2 9 carcasses including the carcass length and depth. It is estimated th at 99.8% of the predicted cut paths are accurate to within 14.2 mm whi ch is sufficient to guide a compliant tool along the spine to severe t he connective tissue. A concept to improve the path prediction by grou ping the carcasses was tried. However, errors in predicting the group of a carcass negated the improved accuracy achieved. The best form of prediction of the carcass spine was found to determine the parameters of a single six-parameter model from the length and depth of the carca ss.