Automating the transfer of live birds to a poultry kill line promises to ease stress levels for both humans and livestock.

A robotic system that could utilize machine vision to pick a moving object off a conveyor poses an extremely difficult design challenge. When the moving object is a living creature, the challenge of calculating where it will be when the robot tries to grasp it is virtually insurmountable. A different type of grasping system needs to be designed for poultry shackling, and in 1997 Kok-Meng Lee began applying principles of opto-mechatronics, system dynamics and kinematics to devise a compliant grasping mechanism to automate the shackling process. Working with colleagues from the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and collaborators such as Bruce Wester, a live bird expert with the University of Georgia’s department of poultry science. Lee has devised a system that separates the birds, orients them to a grasping device and then presents the legs in a consistent manner for shackling. Components include a beam-switch and digital camera system and two revolving drums that use a dozen flexible rubber fingers to grasp each bird without injuring it and shackle them at line speeds of 160 to 180 per minute.