A food manufacturing company plans to use industrial robots to automate the production of vacuum-packed retort tray meal for retail business. A retort tray meal consists off cooked rice, meat and vegetables put in a plastic boxed tray. The manual  manufacturing process of making the trayt meal starts from cooking the rice in industrial grade rice cooker, meat and vegetables  in separate cooking pans. After the food is cooked workers in the kitchen need to assemble the tray meal by putting rice meat and vegetables in the proper positions in the tray for esthetical purpose. The kitchen workers first will scoop the rice from the rice cooker, shape and weigh the rice dough, and finally  put  the rice  in the tray using  a utensil. Similar procedures  are used  to dispense  the cooked meat and vegetables to the tray.

For automated tray meal production the layout of the rice plate holding the cooked rice and the transfer line with meal tray.

a) Determine  a suitable  type  of robot manipulators for the rice- dispensing task based on  the actions  of scooping  moving , orienting  and dispensing  the rice  to the designated  tray, and state  the reason. Note  that  the end-effector  to shape  and weigh the rice  need not  to be  considered.

b) Describe  the necessary  features the robot  manipulator  needs  to have  when  put in a  kitchen  environment  for food production. Note  that the kitchen  workers  will still  be walking  around  in the kitchen near the  robot.