Latest / Through the Line: Packaging and Processing / Live from PACK EXPO—Actionable Data, Fenceless Cobot Safety, and the Humanoids That Didn’t Show: ProFood World

Transcript

Live from PACK EXPO—Actionable Data, Fenceless Cobot Safety, and the Humanoids That Didn’t Show: ProFood World · Through the Line: Packaging and Processing

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Casey Flanagan with Pro Food World, and I'm here with my colleague Derek Teal, editor-in-chief of Pro Food World.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we are at Pac Expo.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: It is the big game.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: So how are you feeling so far at the show?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's been a big game.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I've run 200 yards and it's only halftime.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: It really is only halftime.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's only day two, right?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: It is, yeah.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: We got a bit of the Monday blues, I think.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's just started on a Sunday since it's Chicago this year.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, exactly.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're in for the long haul, but these shows go, they end before you know it.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: They'll fly by.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: So but it has been a really eventful show so far, I'll say.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: It has.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I've seen quite a few really cool things and a few trends bubbling up on the surface.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: So how about yourself?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: What have you seen so far?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Any major innovations or trends?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny because don't always want to do a comparison of different things that you saw at other shows.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's really hard because we've talked so much about Interpack, it's really hard not to draw comparisons about things that we have and haven't seen between Germany and here.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: But one of the things that I've seen that I didn't really see overseas was the whole idea of data integration, I should say actionable data integration.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's often when you're talking about data, it was the problem was everybody, oh that's good data, that's that's great, it gets more and more data.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: But what do you do with that data?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I've got it now, but what do I do with it?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: And what we're seeing now with a lot of the machines is that they have specific using AI to incorporate, okay, the AI is gonna collect this data, collate it for you, and here's what you need to do with the data that you have.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that's great.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And beyond that, it's also multifunctionality with the machines themselves.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: We saw that at Interpack, but it's also the other thing, I am all over the place today.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yay! But that's how we feel.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: We've been all over the place, and it's literally jumping from one booth to one booth and getting different seeing something this bit of expo brain.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now time for something completely different.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: And in the case of inspection detection, we talked about this with other products, like for instance, Eagle Inspection, Eagle by Mattler Toledo, I think, is a name now.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: They've just introduced the simultask six, and one of the advances that they've come up with was scanning on different uh wavelengths.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's the correct term, but it's like different okay, this type of scanning can get you low density matter, this type of scanning can get you density matter.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's all in one machine, and on top of that, we can collect all the information from the past runs.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: AI can collect all the information and then run it through AI, and then it can spit out this is what you need to do.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you need to reach out to your deboner about, oh, we've got so much of this type of bone running through the poultry, and or maybe you have to do something else with that information.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: But it's telling you, giving you ideas as to what you can and can't do with that.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really interesting application of really just automating and simplifying that process of looking at your manufacturing data to improve further, just taking that out of the hands of having to be something you have to do by hand, and it seems like a ton of work to do those equations and figure out exactly where there might be a gap that's happening.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that's a really useful way to implement connectivity.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I also saw quite a lot of connectivity on the on the show floor so far.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: One of the more impressive ones I saw that was it was from QAD Red Zone.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it was their new champion AI system.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a similar kind of thing.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was directly connected to manufacturing data, directly connected to that real-time data.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: But on the front end of it, on the actual user interface of it, it was basically a chat bot.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was like an LLM, but directly connected to your own factory.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Figuring out gaps in your production was as simple as chatting it up and saying, hey, what do I need to focus on today?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, it gave several action items or data on what it saw that was an outlier or an anomaly.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it becomes that simple for a line technician, for a plant manager, for anyone to just get a quick look at what's going on in the plant.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think that you mentioned language models, large language models.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I forgot that actually my first visit this morning was with smart sites, and that's what they were talking about is taking the information that you get from taking that information, running it through a large language model, but it's also isolated to the plants.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's something that we have to stress that it's not when you're talking about a language model, it's not something that you would use with Chat GPT per se, where it's pulling information from, and maybe it is ChatGPT, but it's just localized within that plant.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's not pulling stuff from the web because you don't want it to hallucinate.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, there are companies that are still having their AI hallucinate a little bit.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: They're working on that, they're still getting that taken care of.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that's sort of comes in the training and ensuring that is your plant ready for AI?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they actually had a neat little checklist to go through if to determine whether or not your plant was ready for AI.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Very cool.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's so interesting.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Of something that you can run through on, okay, how's my cybersecurity?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: How's my training for my workers that'll be engaged with it?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like something where you can really walk through and decide, okay, now is the time I'm ready to implement this in the factory.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: So that's great.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: I I was seeing similar things like this quite a bit with these connected tools.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: It just kept coming up, funny enough.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And another one of those, I just spoke with them today.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was stock IQ, and they were a supply chain planning software.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: But the new innovation that they just came out with, it's an agencai AI called Edison.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it is basically like a personal assistant.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's all connected to the operation and to the supply chain data, and it can place orders, it can talk to vendors, it can pull up insights on, say, things like inventory.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's all right there.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's something that can actually like the the whole thing with agentic AI is it can do tasks on its own.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's basically it's taking like tasks off the hands of people that maybe you're just helping free up some space in on some checklists, on some task lists.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and we've obviously talked about that a lot in the past couple of years, about how the workforce ever every company's having workforce issues.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're able to free somebody up using AI, it's a it's a fantastic way of doing that.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Assuming, of course, you're able to still keep track of it.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's one thing I don't think anybody should do at this point, and that is just let AI run wild throughout your plant.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's yeah, that's not a good idea.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, not quite yet.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's definitely some responsibility involved and some caution that needs to be involved in order to make sure that this isn't something that absolutely falls apart on on a moment's notice.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because especially certain forms of AI, especially in a humanoid form, maybe take your head off.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but when the robots attack.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: When the robots attack, that's for those listeners who have been up to date.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it happened at Interpack.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: Sort of I'm being very facetious there, but it did happen.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Look like it happened.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it got a little feisty.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I haven't had to fend off any humanoids kicking at my head this time around, which has been the one of the more unique things that we haven't seen, at least in my opinion, that we haven't seen at this year's show, given all the talk about how humanoids are.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: You and I just attended a webinar just the other day before coming to this year's PAC Expo about humanoid robots.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you can listen to that on an episode of End of the Line podcast, Shadowless Promo.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we haven't seen any of that here.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: At least it maybe it is here, but I think at Inter Pack, it was very in your face, whereas this year it hasn't been so much uh in your face.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Agreed.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it has been interesting to see because yeah, at Interpack, we saw a couple of them.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like one of the ones we saw was one of the smaller ones.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Which, from what I understand from attending a humanoid robot forum earlier this year, if you see the ones that are three-quarter sized, those are more for showing off.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, really.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's more attention in front of the booth.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a it's like a booth attention grabber.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and but the interesting thing about those is those companies that are making them are also using that movement data for training the bigger stuff that would go into an industrial environment when they're ready for that.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so we did.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: I remember we saw one that was that size, which it's very cool to see, very flashy, but you just got to recognize that as just for the booth.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: But we did see one I remember in at Interpack that was a full-sized robot that that was.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think Matt saw that one, right?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Our colleague Matt Reynolds on Packaging World.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to go run over there when he told me that and check that out.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was a little one that threatened me.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: I could take it.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was small.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was yeah.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so it has been interesting to see that even the flashy booth ones haven't been haven't been present here.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not exactly sure what the reason for that might be if CPG isn't just it just isn't publicly ready for it yet, or maybe the robotics already on the floor are pretty flashy and pretty cool to check out.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's there might be some of that.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: It might be.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: And earlier we had an editorial luncheon and our speaker Brian Wagner was there, and during that presentation, a lot of it involved AI.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And as we were sitting in that lunch, I was thinking to myself, yeah, at this time last year, I didn't really use AI for much.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And now it's been incorporated.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now it is something that has become so part of the zeitgeist that okay, it's not worth mentioning anymore unless it's in the form that we just talked about earlier.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just don't discount everything that we already just said.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: But and I'm wondering too, if as this talk about humanoid robots continues, that at if at what point does it become so normalized that we don't really talk about it anymore?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's happened here yet, but I just wonder it.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, just random thoughts by Derek Teal.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: When is the human-shaped one no different than the other robotics that we've seen out here?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: I still think they're far off.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: You would know better than me because that's something you've been covering a little bit more than I have, but I still think they're far off.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, yeah, it's gonna need the standards, of course, and not to get too deep into this tangent, but it's uh the standards of the it seems like the biggest curdle.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And meeting the standards also means being totally reliable in terms of never falling over or having a backup plan in case it's about to fall over, anything like that.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's interesting to see those standards, how they're trying to get that developed and get that into a position where maybe one day it could come into a CBG plant.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: What else have you seen?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, another one of the really interesting things I've seen has been in cobalt sensing.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess also getting into robotics.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen a few different approaches of this on the show floor, which has been interesting to see how these companies are are going at what angle they're taking the task of making sure this cobalt is safe in an environment.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: So one that I thought was especially innovative was from B-Robox, and they had a dynamic safety zone, and it was using ultrasonic perception.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: So as a geofencing system?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, yes.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so it was ultrasonic, so it was using sound, and it was directly mounted in the robot.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: So there was no fencing around it, no physical fencing, just the robot.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And like a sonar.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, yeah, it seemed like it.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I'm not tuned into the science quite enough to be able to say the ultrasonic equal sonar.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, your journalism degree doesn't allow you to talk about scientific stuff for that.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's why I went into this field.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but so it was uh just crazy to see this thing able to recognize if someone gets near it and start to slow down, the light would turn yellow and it would slow down into that position.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then it gets just a little bit closer and it decides, oh, you're simply far too close now.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it would turn red and stop for that moment.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: But it was doing all of that in in a dynamic level.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't an on-off switch, it was a kind of a gradient approach to its speed versus how close someone was, and doing that without anything around it.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that's it.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was gonna say, I've seen systems like that in plants, but I just haven't seen one on the robot itself.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's been, like you said, you know, just a box around it, essentially.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right, exactly.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: So and I did see other ones on the show floor that were doing variations of that having a box around it.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Still innovative in the in their like in those other ways.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: One of those was it was from Denso, and it was this very highly accurate sensor system, and it was using sensors from SIC, and they were mounted on a cage above the above the robot.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And they he mentioned at one point that it that if you put it in a certain setting, it was so sensitive that it could distinguish between the folds on your clothes.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let's hopefully not my clothes because I do too many wrinkles.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, or better pull out the iron before you approach this robot.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, really interesting to see that.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that was also there was a TV screen showing what the robot could see there, and you could predetermine okay, this is a an obstacle that is not going to lead because it's uh say a pole or a foundation in the middle of the room versus this is the moving thing that should not be here, and it it would recognize that.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: So very cool to see how they were able to set that up.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then another one I just passed by, talked with them a little bit about was from it was Dusan, I think was the their name.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And they had a cobot with sensors that were floor-mounted, so similar kind of thing, but it was it was more like right where you would be stepping.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: There were a few on the ground around the crowbot for safety.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: So really interesting.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've seen any cobots out on the floor.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't seen many cobots.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, but I know we have different territories for that we've decided to cover for the show, and so maybe I'm just getting all the data and you're getting all the fun robots.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they know that all the robots are on the attack if I walk by.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe that's why exactly bad reputation.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but yeah, yeah, they're in the other halls.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: But one of the things I wanted to think one of the trends that I imagine it's time to come to a close on is that everybody has been talking about stuff that they're gonna bring to Pac Expo Las Vegas next year.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting, yes, yeah.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: I asked what new and innovative product do you have this year?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Oh, we don't have anything this year, but next year we do.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Huh.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Funny.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because usually you would think Chicago is Pac Expo International.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is the top one.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: But if a lot of people are looking at Vegas for their for their goal for bringing out some new stuff, that's an interesting observation.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, very interesting.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't a shameless promotion at all.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, all the more reason to check out PacExpo Las Vegas next year.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Great, awesome.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I am looking forward to getting back on the show floor.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: This has been a great show so far, and I'm excited to see what we get to see in the next couple days between education sessions and more innovations that are out there.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Agreed, and hopefully you continue to see all the robots.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll I'll keep an eye out for them.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see how many I can collect by the end of this.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Warn me away from them.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, cool.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: All right, thanks, Derek.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was great chatting.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Casey, as always.