HYGIENIC DESIGN CRITERIA FOR ROBOTIC SYSTEMS IN FOOD PROCESSING ENVIRONMENTS Part 1: FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS 

The focus is on fundamental hygienic design principles for any robotic systems used in open food processing environments in both wet- and dry-cleaned open food processing environments. Specific guidance on construction, installation, integration and minimum requirements to ensure hygienic use of robots and robotic systems is coved along with hygienic design criteria necessary for EHEDG equipment certification of parts of robotic systems, primarily simple robot structures like a robot arm.

Robotic systems including end-effectors (end-of-arm-tools) are increasingly applied in operations where they can come in direct or in-direct contact with food products. Examples are ingredient sorting, dosing, slicing, handling, primary packaging and quality control. Many of these products are perishable and highly vulnerable to microbial contamination requiring robotic systems meeting relevant hygiene standards. 

Robotic systems are used in medium-risk and high-risk zones to replace manual operations for various reasons. Intuitively the robotic systems may eliminate some of the cross-contamination risks arising from personnel interaction, but a great part of the robotic system may have direct impact on the safety of the production environment. 

The benefits of hygienic design and hygienic operation are not only product safety and the potential to increase the shelf life of food products, but also reduced maintenance, improved sustainability and lower operating costs. The actual hygienic design depends on the cleaning of robotic systems may be semi-automated or automated spray cleaning (including the use of foam, gel, etc.) as well as manual wet and dry cleaning using brushes, cloths, scrapers etc. Therefore, it will be illustrated how the hygienic design and risk assessment principles should be applied during design and application of robots and robotics systems for open food environments.