Online path planning of pork cutting robot using 3D laser point cloud

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose an new online path planning method for porcine belly cutting. With the proliferation in demand for the automatic systems of pork production, the development of efficient and robust meat cutting algorithms are hot issues. The uncertain and dynamic nature of the online porcine belly cutting imposes a challenge for the robot to identify and cut efficiently and accurately. Based on the above challenges, an online porcine belly cutting method using 3D laser point cloud is proposed. Design/methodology/approach The robotic cutting system is composed of an industrial robotic manipulator, customized tools, a laser sensor and a PC. Findings Analysis of experimental results shows that by comparing with machine vision, laser sensor-based robot cutting has more advantages, and it can handle different carcass sizes. Originality/value An image pyramid method is used for dimensionality reduction of the 3D laser point cloud. From a detailed analysis of the outward and inward cutting errors, the outward cutting error is the limiting condition for reducing the segments by segmentation algorithm.