Egg Vending Machine ( Poultry Automation )

Dr. S. Denis Ashok , Mr.R.C.Narrendar, Mr.Shashank Moro and Tilak School of Mechanical and Building Sciences VIT University, Vellore-632014, Tamil Nadu, India

Introduction:

         A Dutch farmer’s innovative approach has resulted in developing farm vending machine. He could dispense free range fresh eggs farmer to consumer. Most of the eggs are sold in super markets to all over the world but a small portion is sold through Egg Vending machine. This is already a big success.

     Central Poultry Development Organization (Northern Region), Chandigarh Govt. of India, Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Animal Husbandry Dairying and Fisheries tried to fabricate a suitable prototype Egg Vending Machine which is suitable to over country, with this idea The Central Poultry Development Organized approached many engineering colleges in India. However only Vellore Institute of technology agreed to design, fabricate and installed modern Electronic Prototype Egg vending machine with smart card swipe system and multi coin dropping system.

     The Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamil Nadu Post graduate students of Mechatronics department successfully installed The Egg vending machine at Central Poultry Development Organization (Northern Region), administration building and this has been unveiled the Electronic Egg Vending Machine by Shri. Sanjay Bhoosreddy, IAS, AP&F, Joint Secretary, Govt of India , Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Animal Husbandry Dairying and Fisheries in presence of Dr. P.K Shukla , Dean and professor, Mathura Veterinary College and Dr. P. Blahwar, Joint commissioner, on 12th October 2013 on the occasion of One day National conference on ‘Revitalization of rural Poultry (conservation perspective) on the event of World Egg day.

Fig 1: Shri. Sanjay Bhoosreddy, IAS, AP&F, Joint Secretary, Govt of India , Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Animal Husbandry Dairying and Fisheries in presence of Dr. P.K Shukla , Dean and professor, Mathura Veterinary College and Dr. P. Blahwar, Joint commissioner (Poultry) along with the Professor Dr. S. Denis Ashok and the Post Graduate Mechatronics students Mr. R.C Narrender, Mr. Shashank Moro , Mr. Tilak, and others.

     Egg Vending Machine Team: Dr. S. Denis Ashok Professor –Mechatronics Divison Instrumentation Laboratory School of Mechanical and Building Sciences, VIT University , Vellore -632014 Investigators (System Design and Assembly): Mr. R.C Narrender, Mr. Shashank Moro Technical support and Programming: Mr. Tilak, Mr. Abilash, Purchase and logistics: Mr. Anuraag

     Project Background: The incursion of the vending technology has revolutionized the markets and has established a new way to product livery in particular has products. There lies a huge market shares for daily day commodities like eggs and milks with short time, so they must reach the society instantly without any delay. This problem is faced by the poultry industry; where a huge gap is created between the poultry domain and the direct interaction with the market. So this proposal provides some valuable insights for investing ideas to deliver a seamless egg vending machine, which could solve the problem.

    Project Scope: The concept of egg vending machine is not only meant for individual purposes, it can also be used for developing consistent networks for automatic distributors in all localities. The availability of huge range of communication standard enables the usage of peak technology so that these egg-selling machines have smallest operational costs. The main scope that it would establish is direct commodity delivery to market without any inter-mediate trades, timely delivery to society and less operational costs.

     Objectives: The various objectives that could be achieved through the egg vending machine are:

*To reduced the operating cost by removing the unnecessary employment and vend a product to customer 24 hours a day.

*To facilitate manageability by establisher alone as the vending has inbuilt data logging and reporting systems.

*To enable easily configurability according to any market changes and can be placed anywhere in a locality.

*To make the machine interactive with its clients for customizable purches.

* To follow all the international regulations regarding the food safety laws.

*To follow all the international regulations regarding the food safety laws.

Specific exclusion from scope

 *The project mainly emphasizes on vending of 6 or 12 eggs in a package.

*Money transaction is done using credit card based system for improved security. However, coin based transaction can also be provided alongside with it.

Storage Unit:

                It is the storage unit where the eggs are stacked under indexed fashion. The storage unit can also be refrigerated if necessary. The whole part of the storage unit consists of eggs that are packed inside the egg trays. The major components of storage unit are

• Eggs trays and stacks
• Proximity sensors for indexing

Dispensing Mechanism:

The dispending mechanism is the manipulator unit that identifies the egg tray and delivers it to the client as per his requirements. It is simple Cartesian manipulator with 3 –DOF as a PPR configuration. After taking out the required tray section it places it over the conveyor mechanisms which deliver it through the outlet.

• 3-DOF robot manipulator
• Tray handling gripper
• Conveyor mechanism

User Interaction Unit

The various components of the user interaction unit are:

Touch Screen Interface:

The touch screen interface is provided to facilitate an intuitive way of interaction with the vending machine. The user inputs about the number of eggs required are taken into the controller and the processing information about the credit transactions are displayed through this.

Money Exchanger:

It is specialized module that is customizable for smart card based exchange. As coin based system are out-dated and are not fail-safe. So it has been upgraded to new smart card based system that had direct interaction with the touch screen for user inputs and through internet connection it can make online transactions.

Master Control Unit:

The various components of the master control unit are:

Security System:

Fig2. Egg Vending Machine Electronic System

Fig 3 Egg Vending Machine

Functional Components of Egg Vending Machine

A. Vending Unit

The major components of the vending unit are:

Powering Unit:

The major power source for the machine is obtained from the solar power during the day and the obtained power is stored inside the battery backup. The power source is capable of powering the entire machine, the various power distributions are tabulated below as shown in Table 1:

    As this system is often vulnerable to theft the features of security plays a major role. It has inbuilt alarm system that may trigger the alarm in case of any damage or hack into the machine. Also it has an in-built safe design to prevent itself from damage. The various criteria are of safety are tabulated.

Data Logging:

     The data logging mechanism is an in-built subroutine function embedded alongside the main program. It often creates some logs for the various operations taking place inside the machine. The facility enables easy manageability and maintainability.

Supervisory Control:  

     The supervisory control is a logical operator that handles all the functions of the vending machine it controls identify the status and response to the user. All the inputs and outputs of the system are processed here. It has the code incorporate inside it to perform the vending operations and debiting the transaction as per the user’s need. The master control hardware of the vending machine sits here. It has the code incorporated inside it to perform the vending operations and debiting the transactions as per the user’s need. The master control hardware of the vending machine sits here. It is a General purpose based microcomputer that has in-built architecture to support device connectively though GPIO, internet connectivity through Thernet port and display interfaes; with all its features it can run Linux distributions on it.

Functional Blocks

The overall functional working of the vending machine is illustrated below as show.

Silent Features:

• It can stack up to 100 eggs trays
• Nearly 600 eggs can be dispensed out
• Any Packed poultry commodity can be vended
• Both coin and smart card can be used for user credit validation.
• Simple two step operation (Pay-collect) for the user
• It can vend either 6 eggs or 12 eggs as per the requirements.
• Dual controller for enhanced operability.
• Manual override for easy trouble shooting

Fig 4 Packed Eggs Delivery

Acknowledgement :  The senior author highly thankful to the authorities Shri Sanjay Bhoosreddy, IAS, AP&F, Joint Secretary, Govt. of India, Ministry of Agricultural, Department of Animal Husbandry, Diarying and Fisheries and Dr. Asimahab Batobyal , Joint Commisioner (Poultry) , Krishi Bhawan and Dr. K. Ravvi Kumarr, Director , Central Poultry Development Organization (Northern Region), Chandigarh, Industrial Area, Phase-I for their encouragement and facilities provided for successfully installation at CPDO(NR), Chandigarh. We are highly thankful for support and interest in the Egg vending machine development work.

Feed Back on Egg Vending Machine

1. 1. 1. Invention of Egg Vending Machine is a great achievement. I think this is a revolutionary invention in the field of egg industry and this is all due to your hard work and vision.

1. 1. 2. Egg vending machine is an excellent item to introduce in Big Metro cities for commercial purpose. I was very impressed after seeing the Egg Vending machine demonstration.