Method and system for portioning workpieces using reference shape as a directly controlled characteristic

A system for portioning a food workpiece into one or more pieces, comprising:

• a scanner for scanning the workpiece;
• a cutter for portioning the workpiece;
• and
• a processor coupled to the scanner and the cutter, the processor controlled by computer-executable instructions for performing the steps of:
• (a) receiving multiple acceptable combinations of one or more directly controlled physical characteristics of one or more final pieces to be portioned from each workpiece, one said directly controlled physical characteristic comprising the desired shape(s) of the final piece(s) as established by a plurality of reference coordinates that collectively define the desired directly controlled reference shape(s) of the final pieces;
• (b) controlling the scanner to scan a workpiece to obtain scanning information;
• (c) simulating portioning the scanned-in workpiece according to the one or more directly controlled physical characteristics and calculating resulting one or more indirectly controlled physical characteristics of the one or more final pieces to be portioned according to the one or more directly controlled physical characteristics;
• (d) moving the reference coordinates about the workpiece to different locations to define modified coordinates and/or moving the reference coordinates relative to each other to define modified coordinates and repeating simulating portioning of the workpiece and rating each combination of directly controlled physical characteristics and associated resulting indirectly controlled physical characteristic based on how close the combination achieves the desired shape of the final piece(s) and the one or more indirectly controlled physical characteristics;
• (e) using one or more algorithms to sequentially select potentially acceptable one or more final portions until an acceptable directly controlled shape(s) of the final portion(s) and/or one or more corresponding indirectly controlled physical characteristic(s) are determined;
• and
• (f) controlling the cutter to cut the workpiece according to the selected acceptable physical shape of the final portions as determined in step (e) above.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium including computer-executable instructions which, when loaded onto a computer, perform a method comprising:

• (a) scanning a food workpiece to obtain scanning information;
• (b) simulating portioning the workpiece according to one or more directly controlled physical characteristics and calculating the one or more resulting indirectly controlled physical characteristics of the one or more final pieces to be portioned from the workpiece according to the one or more directly controlled physical characteristics, said directly controlled physical characteristic comprising desired reference shape(s) of the one or more final pieces as defined by a set of a plurality of reference coordinates that are movable relative to each other to define modified coordinates to seek to achieve desired reference shape(s) of the one or more final pieces and moveable as a set about the workpiece to define modified coordinates to seek to locate the reference shape(s) on the workpiece at an optimum location;
• (c) repeating simulating portioning of the workpiece for multiple combinations of the modified coordinates, and each combination is rated based on how closely the combination achieves the desired reference shape and the one or more indirectly controlled physical characteristics;
• and
• (d) using one or more algorithms to analyze potentially acceptable one or more sets of modified coordinates until an acceptable set of one or more modified coordinates and one or more indirectly controlled physical characteristics are determined.