Canpolar East Inc.

Canopular East Inc.

Paul Hearn

Ernest M Reimer

Leslie E Samson

Ernie Reimer

Stephen King

Ivi Hermanto

Steven King

An apparatus for cleaning the shells of crabs and other crustacean and shellfish for removal of barnacles and other encrusted debris. A conveyor carries the shells through a cleaning station. The cleaning station features a rotating flail, having chains or other like flexible members for impacting against the shells with hard, smooth members for selectively shattering the barnacle shells while permitting the relatively softer crustacean shells to remain intact.

Apparatus for removing barnacles from crustacean shells

An automated crustacean processing apparatus provides a scrubbing of crustacean leg portions at high speed and volume and additionally maximizes the amount of leg processable. A cutting arrangement is provided to sever the legs from the body portions with minimum wastage of usable leg material. Asymmetric scrubbing of the upper and lower leg surfaces means that the upper surfaces, which are less debris-laden and feature a commercially significant layer of red colouring receive a less vigorous scrubbing then the leg undersides, which are more debris-laden and do not feature a red layer.

Automated crustacean cleaning and cutting apparatus and method of using

The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for the automated inspection of objects for the presence of visual anomalies. The apparatus includes a first wide angle camera for acquiring an image of the object, a processor for detecting targets and generating target location from the image of the object, a two axis post-objective scanner associated with a high resolution camera for directing target image to the high resolution camera. The scanner provides a mechanism for saccadic emulation in combination with a high resolution video camera, which can be synchronized to the frame rate of the video camera for rapid high resolution examination of an object. The method according to the present invention comprises the steps of: capturing an image of at least a portion of an object; identifying visual anomalies as targets and detecting any targets on the object; generating location data for a detected target; emulating saccadic movement to selectively capture a high resolution image of a target; and generating an output for analysis. The apparatus and method are particularly suited for the automated detection of defects, in particular parasites, in fish fillets. It is an advantage of the present invention that post-objective scanning permits the camera to remain stationary, while only the mirrors are moved, to acquire high resolution data of substantially only the targets, resulting in increased speed and reduced processing time.

Apparatus and method for automated visual inspection of objects

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St. John's, Canada

Paul Hearn