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'Spot the dog' shows benefits of automated guided vehicle technology

28 February 2022
'Spot the dog' shows benefits of automated guided vehicle technology

AMPC is progressing a program of work to test uses of automated guided vehicle (AGV) technology for the meat processing industry. ‘Spot the dog’ as he is affectionately known, is an AGV with legs. He is a prototype who has been sent to his first meat processing site as part of the AMPC program. 

Jade Baker, IT Technician from The Casino Food Co-Op, said, “Spot is an incredible piece of tech with unprecedented mobility, allowing fully autonomous AI driven missions on plant. 

We are currently testing the capability of Spot to deploy on autonomous missions to survey and capture 3D modeling and visual inspection data from power and refrigeration rooms.”

Stuart Shaw, AMPC program manager, said, “This project is aimed at determining industry readiness to adopt AGVs beyond current manual handling applications by encouraging the industry and providers, to evaluate processing facility uses, and to develop and use AGV technologies where applicable.

“AGV technology is progressively being successfully adopted in other industries and AMPC wants to establish how the technology apply to meat processing more extensively than is used now.

“Through on plant studies, demonstrations, and trials, we will work with processors to determine potential uses by evaluating and documenting the performance of AGV technology to perform tasks such as first deployment in emergency incidents electrical thermal sensing, lairage applications, visual inspections, food safety and micro-bio swabbing in processing facility environments.” 

Trevor Moore, Group Manager Sustainably and Innovation, from the Casino Food Co-Op said, “It’s a surreal experience watching him complete a simple action like opening a door as most of us have never seen a robotic dog, let alone AI driven. 

“Many restricted areas exist on plant with limited human entry and egress without protective equipment or entry preparation. Spot could greatly aid our emergency response and inspection times in potentially dangerous situations while data collection is gathered for decisions. In the short weeks Spots been onsite, initial trialing looks promising. I’m very interested to see where Spot takes us, and how we can implement this tech into our business.”

David Inggs, Head of Ground Robotics at DroneDeploy said, "One of the reasons DroneDeploy has invested so heavily in ground robotics technology is worker safety. Using tools like Spot can keep employees out of potentially harmful and dangerous situations all without ever having to shut down production."

Interested? 

If you would like to get spot the dog at your processing plant, please email s.shaw@ampc.com.au

Check out Spot the dog in action