Design of an Automated Handling System for Limp, Flexible Sheet Lasagna Pasta

The manipulation of flexible and limp sheet materials is a common requirement in many industrial manufacturing processes, however automation of even simple tasks involving these difficult to handle materials tends to be particularly problematic. The industrial manufacture of lasagna ready meals is one example of a process that has been almost completely automated except for the handling of the flexible lasagna pasta, which remains a highly repetitive and labour intensive manual task. In this paper a robotic end-effector is developed to enable the automatic handling of lasagna pasta sheets. The design of the end-effector is described and its performance evaluated through testing using a robot arm. The concept was further developed into a low cost fixed automation machine suitable for industrial use. The pneumatic pick and place type machine was able to pick a pasta sheet from a moving conveyor and place it into a plastic tray with a cycle time of less than 4 seconds.