Smart Vision Works’ SiftAI vision system uses AI to sort potato defects and sizes with high accuracy. | Source: Smart Vision Works
Fresh-pack potato processors struggle to find workers for the final inspection of potato sorting and grading. Smart Vision Works last week announced the SiftAI Robotic Sorter, which combines a delta robot with an AI-based vision inspection system to sort potatoes.
Even when potato-sorting sheds can adequately staff, defects still reach customers, and acceptable potatoes are wasted, it said. The Westborough, Mass.-based company said its robotic sorter can automate final inspection, ensuring accurate grading, increasing profits, and allowing managers to redeploy scarce workers to other tasks.
“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 at Smart Vision Works.
“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.”
Founded in 2012, Smart Vision Works creates AI and machine learning algorithms to reduce the number of images needed to train models. It can then take on challenging machine vision problems and to deliver high-quality solutions for its customers.
KPM Analytics, a global developer of scientific instrumentation, acquired the Orem, Utah-based company in 2023.
The new product includes a vision-based system, AI software, and a proven potato-inspection model including 19 different defects. Installed over a roller table, SiftAI uses its cameras to collect images of all sides of the potato.
Each system is programmed with AI models for overall potato size and shape or the presence of defects like bruises, cracks, percent green, and other cosmetic features.
For any potatoes that grade outside the AI model’s acceptance criteria, SiftAI triggers the robotic arm to pick up and remove the potato from the product stream at rates of 80 to 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, increasing profitability and reducing customer chargebacks, claimed Smart Vision Works. Currently, the industry goal is to have no more than 5% of defective potatoes reaching customers, which is the limit set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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, Smart Vision Works said the financial impact of this system is significant.
The investment pays for itself in fewer than two years, said the company. It asserted that the system’s high accuracy is possible because its technology is not like the basic AI commonly used by other vision inspection systems.
Instead, SiftAI is built on 12 years of development by AI scientists and years of experience in the potato industry. Unlike systems that use optical scanners, the system takes a full digital image and runs it through a neural network, said Smart Vision Works.
The SIftAI Robotic Sorter is available for order now.
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