Hasta la vista, Arnold. Meet the UNIBOT, which finishes every job it’s programmed to design.

Unifiller introduced this robotic decorating system for the first time publicly at the International Baking Industry Exposition in Orlando, Fla., in October. The machine was demonstrated “live” at the show, running real bakery products on a moving conveyor. The demonstration showed how cakes can be decorated automatically “on the fly” with flowable materials such as chocolate, ganache, caramel or piping gels to create various patterns and drizzles.

Unifiller’s engineering team developed a unique but simple method of entering new and intricate designs into the computer. The baker just draws or writes any shape or design onto a PC tablet using a special pen. The design then is entered into the robot arm, and the results can be seen on the cake instantly. Newly created designs can be adjusted, rescaled, deleted or saved for future use.

“We needed a system that was very versatile and yet programmable by the baker,” says Stewart Macpherson, vice president of sales and marketing for Delta, British Columbia-based company.

Normally, a design would have to be drawn by an engineer in auto-CAD and then transferred to the robot.

“We believe this is the world’s only program that will allow the operator to draw a freehand design onto such a PC tablet where the robot will repeat the action and speed of the pen instantly,” Macpherson says.

With the UNIBOT, the baker can decorate with up to three different colors — either simultaneously or separately — onto cakes on a moving conveyor. It also can be used to deposit marble designs into cheesecake or with cake batters into sheet cake pans.

For more information, visit www.Unifiller.com. SF&WB