The invention relates to packaging technology. More particularly, it is related to a method for evaluating the quality of a longitudinal sealing of a food package and an apparatus thereof.
Today, within the food industry, an essential part of a food product is the packaging. Apart from branding of the product and presenting the customers with information the package also has an important role of ensuring the food safety. The packaging materials used in the package can be designed to provide strength and stability, so that the packages are not damaged during transportation. Furthermore, the packaging materials can form a protected environment for the food product so that it is protected from for example bacteria, germs, oxygen and sun light. However, the packaging material is not the only thing that is important in the package. The package needs also to be sealed properly. In a roll-fed system this is usually made by forming a longitudinal sealing along an overlap between two ends of the packaging material such that a tube is formed and thereafter forming packages from the tube by making transversal sealings in a lower end of the tube.
Ensuring the quality of the longitudinal sealing of a food package is not an easy task. Today, a common way of doing this is to evaluate batches of the finished products manually. This means opening finished product to assess the sealing. However this leads to waste of product and to guarantee the quality large quantities of packages must assessed. It is therefore need for an improved method for evaluating the quality of the longitudinal sealing in food packages.
It is an object of the invention to at least partly overcome one or more of the above-identified limitations of the prior art. In particular, it is an object to provide a method and apparatus thereof for assessing the quality of a longitudinal sealing in a food package.
It has been realized that by analysing image data of the longitudinal sealing in the processing line, the sealing can be continuously monitored and actions can be taken at an early stage. This leads to a reduction of wasted product and the quality of each package can be assured as opposed to today’s methods.
According to a first aspect it is provided a method for assessing quality of a longitudinal sealing in a roll fed packaging machine comprising
Image data may be interpreted as either still images or a sequence of still images or a video sequence.
An advantage of the proposed method may be that the quality check can be made in-line as a part of the packaging machine. The transmitted status may give indication of whether the process needs to be interrupted or adjusted due to a low quality sealing, thereby reducing the risk of wasted product.
Optionally, the method may further comprise,
The first longitudinal side section of the protective strip may be applied on the first longitudinal side section of the web, such that the second longitudinal section of the protective strip extends outside the web.
Optionally, the roll fed packaging machine may further comprise,
A longitudinal sealing should be understood as a general term that may refer to either a longitudinal strip sealing, a longitudinal tube sealing or both. Similarly, a sealing status may refer to either a strip application status, a tube forming status or both.
Optionally, the method may further comprise,
The second longitudinal side section of the protective strip may be applied on the second longitudinal side section of the web, such that the protective strip covers the intermediate layer of the packaging material that are exposed at the first longitudinal side section of the web.
The strip application image data and/or the tube forming image data may be captured through a polarized filter. The polarized filter(s) may be advantageous in that reflections in the surface the camera is capturing may be reduced. Furthermore, a heat pattern may be more clearly visible.
The transmitted status may be any one of the statuses underheating, normal or overheating. The status underheating may indicate that not enough heat has been provided when forming the longitudinal sealing. On the contrary, the status overheating may indicate that too much heat has been provided. The status normal may indicate that the longitudinal sealing is within acceptable quality.
The status may be transmitted to a control unit of the strip applicator and/or the tube forming device, and adjusting the heating power based on the status. This may be advantageous in that the roll fed packaging machine may adjust the heating automatically.
The status may be determined by providing the extracted features as input to an artificial intelligence model. The status may refer to the strip application status and/or the tube forming status. Artificial intelligence model should be understood as comprising e.g. machine learning models and neural networks.
Optionally, the step of extracting features from the strip application area may further comprise,
identifying an overlapping area, a heat affected protective strip area and a heat affected web area of the strip application area and including these as the features from the strip application image data.
It should be understood that other features that may be useful for defining the quality of a strip may also be used.
The effects of the heating may comprise a number of cracks in the longitudinal sealing, a size of an overlapping area and reflective properties of the longitudinal sealing.
According to a second aspect it is provided a server for assessing quality of a longitudinal sealing in a roll fed packaging machine, said server may comprise a transceiver, a memory and a control unit,
The strip application status module may determine the strip application status by providing the extracted features to an artificial intelligence model.
The transceiver may further comprise,
The memory may further comprise,
According to a third aspect it is provided a system for assessing quality of a longitudinal sealing in a roll fed packaging machine, said system may comprise,
Optionally, the roll fed packaging machine may further comprise,
Having a server communicatively connected to multiple roll fed packaging machines may be advantageous in that an artificial intelligence model used for determining the statuses may be provided with more data so that it may continuously improve. Put differently, the artificial intelligence model may learn from the image data provided by multiple roll fed packaging machines.
Still other objectives, features, aspects and advantages of the invention will appear from the following detailed description as well as from the drawings. The same features and advantages described with respect to one aspect are applicable to the other aspects unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Embodiments of the invention will now be described, by way of example, with reference to the accompanying schematic drawings, in which
A tube forming device 110 can be provided, configured to receive the web of packaging material 104 with the protective strip 106 applied. The tube forming device 110 can be further configured to form a tube 112 of the web 104 and attaching the ends of the web together. The tube forming device 110 can be further configured form a longitudinal tube sealing 402. The longitudinal tube sealing 402 is described in more detail in connection to
A tube forming camera 114 can be provided, herein illustrated inside of the tube 112. The tube forming camera 114 can capture tube forming image data of the tube forming area 310. A polarized filter 116b may be provided in front of the tube forming camera 114 such that the tube forming image data is captured through the polarized filter 116b. The tube forming image data can depict the longitudinal tube sealing 402. The tube 112 can be sent to a filling and sealing device 118.
The roll fed packaging machine 100 described above is a simplification for illustration purpose. Such a machine may be achieved by installing a strip application camera 108 and/or tube forming camera 114 into an already existing roll fed packaging machine, such as the Tetra Pak Brick System.
The packaging material 202 may comprise of an inner protective layer 206, an outer protective layer 204 and an intermediate strengthening layer 208. The intermediate layer 208 may comprise of one or more layers of material. As an example, the intermediate layer 208 may comprise a paper board layer. The inner protective layer 206 and the outer protective layer 204 may be plastic layers. A protective strip 106 may be provided on the inside of the package, with the purpose of creating a sealing between the overlapping ends of the packaging material 202. The sealing may protect the intermediate layer 208 from coming in contact with the food product held in the food package.
In a first step 710, strip application image data of the strip application area 310 may be received.
In a second step 712, features from the strip application image data may be extracted, wherein the features are related to effects of the heating provided by the strip applicator 122.
In a third step 714, a strip application status may be determined by evaluating the features, wherein the strip application status relates to the quality of the longitudinal strip sealing 502.
In a fourth step 716, the strip application status may be transmitted, thereby providing a quality assessment of the longitudinal strip sealing 502.
Optionally, in a fifth step 702, the web of packaging material 104 may be received by the packaging material receiver.
Optionally, in a sixth step 704, the protective strip 106 may be received by the strip receiver.
Optionally, in a seventh step 706, the longitudinal strip sealing 502 may be formed by the strip applicator 122.
Optionally, in an eight step 708, the strip application image data may be captured from the strip application area 310 by the strip application camera 108.
Optionally, in a ninth step 726, tube forming image data of the tube forming area 404 may be received.
Optionally, in a tenth step 728, features from the tube forming image data may be extracted, wherein the features are related to effects of the heating provided by the tube forming device 110.
Optionally, in an eleventh step 730, the tube forming status of the longitudinal tube sealing 402 may be determined by evaluating the features, wherein the tube forming status is related to the quality of the longitudinal tube sealing 402.
Optionally, in a twelfth step 732, the tube forming status may be transmitted, thereby acquiring a quality assessment of the longitudinal tube sealing 402.
Optionally, in a thirteenth step 718, the tube 112 of the web of packaging material 104 may be formed by the tube forming device 110.
Optionally, in a fourteenth step 720, the first 302 and second 304 longitudinal side sections of the web may be attached by the tube forming device 110.
Optionally, in a fifteenth step 722, the longitudinal tube sealing 402 may be formed by the tube forming device 110.
Optionally, in a sixteenth step 724, the tube forming image data may be captured from the tube forming area 404 by the tube forming camera 114.
Even though described in a certain order, the different steps may also be performed in other orders.
The transceiver 802 may be configured to enable the server 800 to communicate with other devices. The transceiver 802 may execute a strip application image data receiver 822 arranged to receive strip application image data of the strip application area 310. It may further comprise a strip application status transmitter 810 arranged to transmit the strip application status, thereby providing a quality assessment of the longitudinal strip sealing 502. The status may be transmitted to the roll fed packaging machine 100.
The memory 804 may be configured to store program code or modules. The memory 804 may comprise a strip application image data processing module 812 arranged to extract features from the strip application image data, wherein the features are related to effects of the heating provided by the strip applicator 122. It may further comprise a strip application status module 814 arranged to determine a strip application status by evaluating the features, wherein the strip application status relates to the quality of the longitudinal strip sealing 502.
The control unit 806 may be configured to perform the control of the functions and operations of the server 800. The control unit 806 may include a processor 808, such as a central processing unit (CPU). The processor 808 may be configured to execute program code or modules stored in the memory 804.
The transceiver 802 may be further configured to execute a tube forming image data receiver 824 arranged to receive tube forming image data of the tube forming area 404. It may further execute a tube forming status transmitter 816 arranged to transmit the tube forming status, thereby providing a quality assessment of the longitudinal tube sealing 402. The status may be transmitted to the roll fed packaging machine 100.
The memory 804 may further comprise a tube forming image data processing module 818 arranged to extract features from the tube forming image data, wherein the features are related to effects of the heating provided by the tube forming device 110. It may further comprise a tube forming status module 820 arranged to determine a tube forming status of the longitudinal tube sealing 402 by evaluating the features, wherein the tube forming status is related to the quality of the longitudinal tube sealing 402.
The system 900 may further comprise of one or more roll fed packaging machines 904a-c communicatively connected to the server 800. The server 800 may receive image data from the one or more roll fed packaging machines 100. As described in connection to
The artificial intelligence model 902 may be a model designed to output a status of a longitudinal sealing 402, 502 based on extracted features from image data. The artificial intelligence model 902 may also take the image data as input and extract the features itself.
As a non-limiting example, the artificial intelligence model 902 may be an image classification neural network such as the ResNet 50 convolutional neural network. The artificial intelligence model 902 may be trained on images of longitudinal sealings labelled with statuses. For example, images such as those in
From the description above follows that, although various embodiments of the invention have been described and shown, the invention is not restricted thereto, but may also be embodied in other ways within the scope of the subject-matter defined in the following claims.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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20195390.8 | Sep 2020 | EP | regional |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
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PCT/EP2021/074334 | 9/3/2021 | WO |