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- Easy guided format change
- Condition Monitoring for a clear view
- Reliable Tap Water Supply – Setting a Sustainable Standard
- Flexible feeding systems using reliable sensors
- Reliable clamping processes and reduced downtime with ultrasonic sensors
- An AI-powered pharma line clearance solution
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An AI-powered pharma line clearance solution
Automatic line clearance checks in pharmaceutical production
Industry: Pharmaceuticals Customer: Technology demonstrator
As industry leaders in machine vision, edge AI and software, Balluff, Synaptics, 42 Technology (42T) and Arcturus Networks have joined forces to help develop and demonstrate an approach for AI-powered automated line clearance in pharmaceutical manufacturing.
The situation
Line clearance checks are critical in pharmaceutical manufacturing to ensure that all materials, products, labels and records from a previous batch have been completely removed before starting the next one. The process involves multiple manual inspections, often taking up to one hour between batches, which significantly impacts production efficiency, especially as the industry shifts towards personalized medicine and smaller batch sizes. Industry experts estimate up to 85% time savings with automated line clearance versus current manual checks.
The challenge
The four partners pooled their technology expertise and application knowledge to develop a lower cost, flexible, and scalable alternative to existing AI-powered automated technologies. Most dedicated systems designed to automate line clearance processes are too expensive for widespread use because of their high hardware costs, complex integration, and the need for extensive training on production lines.
The solution
42T has designed and built a technology demonstrator to showcase this new AI-driven system in action. The new AI-powered approach combines Balluff’s high-performance image acquisition system with Arcturus’s deep-learning models and the Synaptics AstraTM SL1680 edge AI processor. This new AI-powered platform eliminates that requirement by using deep learning as a stand-alone method for continuous model improvement. This creates a fully-automatic process where datasets are continuously developed in real time.
How does it work?
The system’s embedded intelligence compensates for variables such as shadows and changing light conditions, while its unique self-learning capability continuously improves accuracy and reliability during real-time operation to further boost production efficiencies for pharmaceutical manufacturers.
The system uses fixed position cameras at key locations for monitoring, and it is flexible enough to accommodate "pan and tilt" cameras to scan different production areas depending on the application.
Features
What are the key features of the application?
- FGPA (Field Programmable Gate Array)
- 256 MB image memory
- Smart feature: bandwidth brake
- Easy integration thanks to comprehensive SDK
The products
The USB3 vision camera BVS CA-SF2 is used in the demonstrator. The cameras offer high resolutions and frame rates as well as camera-based smart features that significantly reduce the load on the host system.