Soft Robotics partners with Quest, Ossid to offer robotic solution for food packaging

Company: Soft Robotics Inc.

Equipment Snapshot: Soft Robotics Inc. announced it has teamed with Quest and Ossid to offer a robotic handling and packaging solution to the food industry powered by Soft Robotics' mGripAI technology.

The total solution includes Quest's primary product handling system utilizing a FANUC robot designed to load, orientate, stack, and group products into a wide variety of primary packaging machines—Ossid's flexible and tray packaging solutions, ideal for fresh proteins, produce, baked goods, and more, and Soft Robotics' mGripAI platform that uses ultra-fast 3D vision, artificial intelligence, and soft robotic grasping to enable picking of irregular and delicate food items directly from bulk.

Key benefits of the integrated packaging solution:

Combats workforce shortages by reducing dependency on labor
Increases available floor space by eliminating the need for upstream singulation and sortation equipment
Improves food safety with a complete sanitary and IP69K, wash-down-ready design
Increases throughput by reducing product damage

"This new partnership with ProMach aligns well with our mission to enable automation system manufacturers to tackle some of the most difficult food processing challenges with robotic solutions," said Mark Chiappetta, chief operating officer at Soft Robotics. "Our easy-to-integrate, mGripAI platform makes possible high-speed, sanitary packaging of proteins, produce, baked goods, and prepared foods, directly from bulk, without requiring upstream singulation."

"The shared focus in high-demand sanitary protein and produce applications makes the partnership between Quest, Ossid, and Soft Robotics a great fit, said Tucker Behrns, vice president and general manager at Quest. "We have an excellent opportunity to solve some of the industry's largest challenges through a complete integrated offering capable of random incoming product handling with Ossid's full range of product packaging equipment for a wide range of applications."

"As a leading provider of packaging and labeling equipment in the food sector, we understand the daily challenges of our customers to provide the global food chain with consumer products as quickly and safely as possible," said Jason Angel, vice president of sales and marketing at Ossid. "Teaming with Quest and Soft Robotics to maximize productivity at a time when labor shortages are so impactful is one of the most important initiatives for our company."