A Modeling Approach for Robotic Handling of Deformable Objects in Food Retail to Enable Virtual Commissioning

The large product variety in food retail poses considerable challenges for automation. Moreover, many objects are deformable. Therefore, commissioning new robotic systems requires extensive field testing. To reduce implementation effort and enable virtual commissioning, this paper proposes a modeling approach for the robotic handling of deformable objects in food retail. The virtual environment comprises a collision detection, a contact force model and the object dynamics. To enable real-time simulation, the deformable objects are decomposed into a finite number of rigid bodies. Considering a common example for deformable objects in food retail, simulation results are compared to visual data of real-world experiments. The comparison emphasizes the potential of the modeling approach for virtual commissioning.