Automated foodstuff singulation system

A method for singulating foodstuff comprising:

• releasing a batch of foodstuff into a tank comprising sidewalls and configured to contain a volume of liquid, wherein the liquid has a surface in the tank;
• temporarily engaging a central rotary liquid jet to produce a horizontal stream of liquid into the tank;
• lowering a lifting device comprising a grid plate into the tank to a predetermined depth under the surface of the liquid;
• selectively engaging and disengaging sidewall liquid jets to generate under-liquid streams in the liquid;
• and
• wherein buoyant force and thrust force properties of the liquid in the tank are utilized to separate and manipulate orientation of the batch of foodstuff, resulting in a plurality of separated foodstuff units.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising a computer program product for use by a singulation system, the computer program product comprising computer-executable instructions stored on the non-transitory computer-readable medium such that when executed by a processor cause the singulation system to train an artificial intelligence (AI) model of a machine vision system to singulate foodstuff by:

• obtaining a training dataset comprising a plurality of images of input foodstuff and corresponding plurality of images of output foodstuff;
• generating a plurality of candidate models having different architectures and parameters;
• for each candidate model:
• training the AI model on the training dataset;
• and
• evaluating performance of the AI model on a validation dataset;
• selecting a preferred-performing model from the plurality of candidate models based on performance evaluation of the AI model on a validation dataset;
• and
• further training the preferred-performing model on a larger training dataset comprising the training dataset and additional data points.