In the field of automated bakery mass production, semi‑frozen mousse cakes at 5–8°C represent a typical packaging challenge. Under these conditions, the cake body exhibits uneven softness and hardness, with strong adhesion on fractured surfaces. This makes them highly prone to indentations, deformation, sticking, and material loss. With an extremely low tolerance for defects, these products are difficult to handle with conventional automated equipment
Most leading domestic bakery enterprises have long relied on manual labor for core processes such as tray loading, lid closing, and box packing. Manual production capacity is limited—meeting the high-volume, standardized supply requirements of supermarkets demands a large number of skilled workers. Moreover, inconsistent operator handling leads to unstable yield rates, making this a major bottleneck for capacity expansion and efficiency improvement. Conventional rigid robot grippers tend to cause high product damage, and thus have never been successfully deployed in mass production of soft mousse products.
To address these common industry challenges, SRT developed a customized low‑temperature non‑destructive automated tray‑loading line for mousse cakes for a leading domestic bakery client. By integrating soft gripping technology with multi‑arm robotic coordination, the system delivers fully unmanned, standardized, and scalable mass production across the entire process, while adapting to a wide range of soft, low‑temperature bakery products under real production conditions.
2026
The client’s mousse cakes and other chilled pastries are primarily supplied to large supermarket chains. Previously, each tray‑loading line was staffed with 4 workers, responsible for material sorting and tray placement.
Based on our observations at the client’s production site, we learned that the mousse cakes must be shipped out under a semi‑frozen condition at 5–8°C. At this temperature, the cakes exhibit unstable firmness, making them difficult for conventional grippers to handle, as they cannot adapt to the physical properties during dynamic conveying. Throughout the entire post‑production process, the traditional approach further reveals the following drawbacks:
Closed-loop process integration is difficult to achieve, and isolated automation proves ineffective：The finished product workflow requires a full sequence of depalletizing, tray‑loading, and lid‑closing. A single pick‑and‑place device cannot bridge these steps, so a large number of manual workers are still needed to fill the gaps.
Stringent food‑grade compliance requirements：Bakery workshops require frequent sanitization and cleaning. Conventional equipment has complex structures that easily trap dirt and contaminants, posing food safety risks.
Production lines lack flexibility, making upgrade/iteration costs high：Bakery products have short lifecycles and come in many packaging formats. Traditional automation equipment is difficult and costly to retrofit, making it unable to support flexible production needs.
2026
Core 1: Solving the Low‑Temperature Gripping Challenge
The solution features SRT’s proprietary dexterous fingers, replacing traditional rigid robot grippers and manual handling. This specifically tackles the fragility, stickiness, and unstable physical properties of semi‑frozen mousse cakes.
The dexterous fingers feature a flexible airbag‑driven structure. Four sets of fingers surround and envelop the cake from four sides, with airbags evenly expanding and contracting to deliver precise force control. This conforms to the side cut surfaces of the cake, eliminating rigid compression damage.
In on‑site production tests at 5–8°C, the system consistently gripped both semi‑thawed, sticky cakes and hardened low‑temperature cakes without slipping, dropping, indentation, deformation, or cream adhesion. The grippers feature quick‑change and easy‑to‑clean designs, meeting hygiene standards for food production facilities.
Core Capability 2: Full‑Process Automation for Tray Loading and Lid Closing
The solution integrates delta robots, a high‑precision vision positioning system, and R2/R3 robotic arms to build an intelligent collaborative workstation. This creates a fully unmanned closed‑loop process covering material sorting, gripping and tray loading, depalletizing, lid removing, and precise lid closing.
With high‑precision vision recognition, the system adapts to irregular trays, non‑standard lids, and other special scenarios. The R3 three‑axis robotic arm handles precise picking and separation of trays and lids, preventing misalignment and missed picks. Meanwhile, the R2 two‑axis robotic arm simultaneously handles conveying, tray loading, and lid closing – all without manual intervention.
When the client launches new products with different sizes or shapes in the future, only the end‑effectors and magazines need to be changed – no major retrofitting of the main equipment is required. The entire line can scale with the client’s expanding product portfolio and adapt to market order fluctuations, avoiding repeated capital investment for modifications.
2026
After the solution went live, the client’s production line achieved stable, high‑efficiency mass production. The actual delivered metrics include:
Stable throughput: achieving a sustained production rate of 1,800 boxes per hour, fully matching the scale‑supply standards of supermarket chains.
Quality standardization: Non‑destructive gripping throughout the entire process, with product appearance pass rate approaching 100% – effectively eliminating product damage and appearance inconsistency.
Reduced manpower requirements: 4–6 fewer workers per line compared to the previous setup, cutting labor dependency by over 80%.
Production continuity improved: Single loading capacity of 500 pieces per cycle, reducing downtime for material replenishment and significantly improving overall efficiency.
This solution is suitable for tray‑loading, arranging, and packaging of soft bakery products. It is particularly well‑suited for baked goods companies with high product appearance standards, as well as for production environments that anticipate capacity expansion and require line changeover flexibility.