General Living Lab Agrifood 4.0

Innovative technology such as vision inspection (RGB, multispectral, hyperspectral) can be used for process optimization, to automate quality control or to improve traceability. Within the VLAIO Living Lab Agrifood 4.0, a collaboration between ILVO and Flanders' Food, a series of demonstrations and workshops are being organized in the Food Pilot for food companies from different subsectors in order to demonstrate the added value of this known, but still underutilized smart technology and to accelerate adoption. Thus, we aim to promote the transition to an agri-food industry 4.0.

Demonstration hyperspectral - composition of powder mixtures

In this demonstration, the ratio of powdered mixtures of paprika and turmeric was determined via hyperspectral technology. The technology allows objects to be classified based on both physical (shape) and chemical (composition) characteristics. Numerous applications are possible, including classification, composition or quality determination, and screening for surface defects and contaminations. The demonstration used a hyperspectral linescan camera (Specim FX17) in a linear moving setup to simulate a conveyor belt. The results of this demo illustrated an accurate result.

Webinar Hyperspectral & Multispectral Technology

On June 23rd, 2020, a webinar on sensors, data and data processing for the agri-food industry was organized. In the first part, spectral and machine vision technology was discussed and results of some experiments were presented. The use of spectrometers and hyperspectral cameras for determining (pork) meat quality and the use of hyper- and multispectral cameras for sorting beans and estimating the composition of soybeans was illustrated.

Webinar AI in Agrifood

In this webinar the application of Artificial Intelligence for digital image processing was presented. One application was demonstrated in which peppers were automatically divided into two grading classes and sorted using a parallel robotic arm.