Food delivery system for packaging of food and method of delivering food to be packaged
AssigneeGrupo Bimbo, S.A.B. de C.V.
InventorsJose Antonio Contreras Gamboa, Gerald Edward Holt
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A flipping station including a moving surface upon which an upside-down food item is placed and a ramp spaced from the moving surface so that a gap is defined between the moving surface and the ramp. The moving surface is moving at a sufficient speed so that the upside-down food item has sufficient momentum to travel past the gap and land on the ramp. A contact surface that is positioned past the gap at a contact position and is positioned above the ramp so that the upside-down food item is deflected backwards by the contact surface into the gap and the upside-down food item rotates 180° so as to land right-side up on a landing surface located below the ramp.
Claims32
A delivery system comprising:
- a balancer station comprising a surface upon which multiple food items are placed;
- a grouper station that comprises a surface to receive the multiple food items from the balancer station;
- a controller that is in communication with the balancer station and sends control signals to the balancer station to control distribution of the multiple food items of the balancer station to the grouper station;
- a camera that generates pixels representing images of each of the multiple food items on the surface of the grouper station, wherein signals based on the pixels are sent from the camera to the controller and the control signals sent to the balancer station are based on numbers of the pixels.
A method of delivering multiple food items, the method comprising:
- placing multiple food items on a surface of a balancer station and receiving on a surface of a grouper station the multiple food items from the balancer station;
- controlling distribution of the multiple food items of the balancer station to the grouper station;
- and
- generating pixels representing images of each of the multiple food items on the surface of the grouper station, wherein signals based on numbers of the pixels for each of the multiple food items are used for the controlling distribution of the multiple food items of the balancer station to the grouper station.
A delivery system comprising:
- a grouper station comprising a surface upon which multiple food items are placed;
- a balancer station that comprises a surface to receive the multiple food items from the grouper station;
- a controller that is in communication with the balancer station and sends control signals to the balancer station to control distribution of the multiple food items of the grouper station to the balancer station;
- a camera that generates pixels representing images of each of the multiple food items on the surface of the grouper station, wherein signals based on the pixels are sent from the camera to the controller and the control signals sent to the balancer station are based on numbers of the pixels.
A method of delivering multiple food items, the method comprising:
- placing multiple food items on a surface of a grouper station and receiving on a surface of a balancer station the multiple food items from the grouper station;
- controlling distribution of the multiple food items of the grouper station to the balancer station;
- and
- generating pixels representing images of each of the multiple food items on the surface of the grouper station, wherein signals based on numbers of the pixels for each of the multiple food items are used for the controlling distribution of the multiple food items of the grouper station to the balancer station.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.