Food handling: the MOZART EU project is going to crush it, but softly.

Automation of food packaging has advanced dramatically in the last few decades. The whole process is fully automated for most fruit and vegetable products, from growing and harvesting to sale-ready packaging. However, some food processing industries, like fish and chicken, are still highly dependent on manual handling. Most importantly, these food typologies represent cheap, sustainable, healthy, and nutritious food to the modern society.

In this scenario, automation of fish and chicken processing could introduce cost-saving measures through the reduction of the demand for manual handling, thus further accelerating the transition towards fish and chicken.

MOZART is an EU-funded project that will address these challenges in fish and chicken processing industries by developing a new generation of soft robotics. These can work side-by-side with humans and complement the workforce in the handling of food in the fish and chicken processing industry.

MOZART is expected to deliver new technologies ready for product development. Doing so, the project will bring radical innovation in food processing, while moving these industries in a more sustainable direction. MOZART has the potential to create 5,000 new knowledge-based jobs from 2029 and transfer resources to other steps of the production chain, which are animal welfare, food safety, and food quality.

“ICONS activities in implementing efficient Dissemination, Communication and Exploitation will be crucial to maximise the project’s impact on robotics research, food industry and society. According to the different stakeholders, we will define and adopt a customized approach for dissemination and engagement. We’ll take care of communicating project’s results and stories, turning complex jargon into targeted contents that are understandable and engaging. The aim is to leverage these activities as a key driver for the sustainable exploitation of the project’s results”.

Chiara Bartolacci, ICONS’ Project Manager responsible for BioValue

The MOZART project has kicked off in October under the coordination of IT University of Copenhagen (ITU) and developed in cooperation with 7 other partners with heterogeneous expertise in the fields of mechatronic engineering and robotics, Artificial Intelligence and electronics, food process engineering, food industry, standardization, social science and humanities, and societal outreach and communication.

For further information on MOZART, contact Chiara Bartolacci – Project Manager