Development Status and Industrial Application of Food Intelligent Equipment and Its Critical Technologies

Against the background of Industry 4.0 and the in-depth reform of industry, the food industry is accelerating its transformation from traditional manufacturing to intelligent manufacturing. Faced with the strong demand of consumers for food quality and safety, personalized nutrition and full-chain traceability, intelligent equipment characterized by data-driven, intelligent perception, intelligent decision-making and precise execution has become the key engine to reshape the competitiveness of the food industry. The definition and six core characteristics of food intelligent equipment were systematically defined, namely multi-dimensional perception and data-driven, intelligent decision-making and autonomous regulation, precise control and efficient production, interconnection and collaborative operation, full-life-cycle traceability and safety guarantee, and flexible production and personalized adaptation. The industrial application and technical progress of intelligent equipment in typical food processing scenarios such as intelligent sorting of raw materials, intelligent cutting, intelligent fermentation, intelligent sterilization, as well as typical cyber-physical systems such as smart kitchen and food processing robots were mainly reviewed, and the application effects of key technologies including multi-modal sensing, machine vision, spectral analysis, artificial intelligence and digital twin were analyzed. The current development of intelligent food equipment was pointed out to still confront with practical challenges, such as serious interference caused by the heterogeneity of food materials, insufficient stability of sensors, difficulties in multi-source heterogeneous data fusion, and limited accuracy and real-time performance of digital twin modeling. The development trends including multi-modal sensing fusion, deep integration of AI and digital twin, research and development of green intelligent equipment, and full-chain trusted collaboration were prospected. Studies showed that intelligent food equipment could significantly improve production efficiency, ensure product quality and safety, reduce resource consumption, and meet the requirements of flexible and personalized production, providing important technical support for the high-quality, green and intelligent transformation of the food industry.