zero distance
A special trip of a grain of rice
Young teachers and students form a team to open the "dream of enjoying the cool under the grass" in another way
In Heilongjiang, Mr. Yuan Longping's "dream of enjoying the cool under the grass" is coming into reality in the form of intelligent manufacturing with the efforts of a group of young scientific and technological workers.
After logging into the control system software, inputting the basic information of raw materials and finished product index requirements, after collecting raw material image information and other processes, a batch of rice containing germ will soon be produced in a special rice machine...
This special rice machine was designed and developed by Li Bing, a young teacher at Harbin Engineering University, and a team of post-90s students. The rice it produces is different from the rice seen in daily life.
Because it contains germ, its existence is like putting a "hat" on the gap at the edge of the rice, making the rice grains more round, plump and nutritious.
Small germ contains big nutrients
For a long time, the reduction of food processing has been an important issue of concern to countries around the world.
In September 2021, the International Conference on Food Loss Reduction initiated by my country released the Jinan Initiative of the International Conference on Food Loss Reduction, which proposes to reduce food loss and waste, which has become an important means to improve food security and an urgent global proposition.
In fact, as early as 2014, Li Bing's team started project preparations for the problem of grain loss, transforming and applying the key technology of small target detection in a basic scientific research project to the direction of moderate rice processing.
During the preliminary investigation, the team found that the traditional rice processing relies on the hard friction between the rice to achieve peeling and whitening with the help of the interaction force.
The refined white rice processed in this way has less nutrition, and the remaining starch mainly provides calories. People who eat too much can easily cause diseases such as diabetes, which is not conducive to human health.
The germ, which is lost during processing, is rich in nutrients and is considered the "soft gold of the plant", with 20 times the nutritional value of the endosperm part of rice.
Relevant data shows that the content of vitamin E alone is 210 times higher than that of polished rice in rice with germs.
"At present, there are huge losses in the global rice processing link. The root cause is the backwardness of research principles and the lag of technology. The backward research principles will directly lead to the loss of food and a large amount of nutrients." Harbin Engineering University 2017 Control Science and Technology Li Shuofeng, a doctor of engineering, said.
In 2017, Harbin Engineering Beimi Technology Co., Ltd. came into being. Li Bing is the founder of the company, and Li Shuofeng is the co-founder. They led the team to start the research and development of the intelligent processing system of active germ-retained rice.
"What we have to do is to remove the brown rice cortex while leaving the germ as complete as possible." Li Bing said that until 2019, they initially set up a moderate rice processing production line, which took two years.
Let every grain of rice be "seen"
In the process of developing an intelligent processing system for active germ-retained rice, the team proposed to form a complete rice moderate processing solution through technologies such as visual feedback and flexible milling.
Once this plan is implemented, it will achieve a breakthrough in the quality of rice processing.
During the research process, Li Bing and the students encountered difficulties: First, the germs of rice are very small and very similar, occupying only a few dozen pixels under the detection lens, and the existing detection models are difficult to distinguish accurately.
Secondly, in order to test the system stability and applicability of the rice machine, the team needs to purchase a large number of different kinds of rice.
"Different rice has different shapes. In actual processing, rice is not flat, and it is easy to form dense adhesion when mixed together, which is difficult to detect and extract." Li Shuofeng said.
He told a reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that in order to maximize the retention of germs, the image information of the raw materials must be carefully observed before dynamic adjustment can be implemented according to quality deviations.
To this end, the team independently built a variety of model algorithms based on the characteristics of the germ. With the support of the algorithms, the visual detection accuracy of rice reached 97.2%, realizing the detection and extraction of a single grain of rice, so that every grain of rice can be "seen". ".
On this basis, the team developed a personalized milling procedure to control the milling accuracy to 50 microns, achieving "one meter for one parameter", thus providing data support for the optimization and adjustment of the rice machine.
After the rice enters the equipment, it goes through three layers of flexible grinding and fine processing for more than 680 times.
Compared with the traditional processing method, the processing method adopted by the team is more "soft".
Before processing, the team first spread the rice layer by layer. After entering the machine, the special rice knife "wrapped" the rice grain by grain for flexible friction on the basis of friction against the rice, which minimized the possible damage to the germ.
"We can precisely peel off the fiber layer equivalent to one-third of the thickness of the hair, so that the milled rice germ can be preserved intact and still retain the germ activity." Li Jiashuai, a team member, said that in the collected images, the rice grains are crystal clear. Like a "pearl".
Because its germ is intact and still retains germ activity, it is called "live rice" by industry insiders.
After testing, the processing system independently developed by the team can achieve a rice retention rate of 95% and an embryo integrity of more than 95%, far exceeding the Japanese standard of 80% retention rate and reaching the international advanced level. Other conditions remain unchanged. , can achieve 3%-5% reduction in rice.
"Don't underestimate this figure. In 2021, the national paddy output will be about 426 billion catties. The application of technology can reduce the loss of at least 12.78 billion catties in the country's rice processing every year." Li Shuofeng said.
It is understood that the core technology and equipment production of the Li Bing team's project of "Storing Grain in Technology - Industrialization of Moderate Processing of Rice to Help National Food Security" was completed by the team independently, achieving 100% localization.
Team members have published 15 papers on key technologies, and have 70 authorized patents and 10 software copyrights.
At the same time, the project won the gold medal in the teacher-student co-creation group in the 7th China "Internet +" College Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition in 2020.
Taking over the baton of "Dream of Enjoying the Cool under Hexia"
"Mr. Yuan Longping has a dream of enjoying the cool water, and we also have a dream that we hope to escort national food security through technical research." Li Shuofeng said.
According to his recollection, at the beginning of the project, there were many processing procedures for rice machines, and the model at that time required manual input of instructions, which greatly reduced the efficiency of detection.
The team tried framework transplantation, establishing dynamic link libraries, and building communication interfaces, so that the model can be automatically detected with one click on the industrial computer of Miji.
After the production line was built, the team began to test the program algorithm, running speed and stability. The whole process can be described as "one step at a time".
Team member Li Mingze told China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that at the beginning of the project, there was a machine downtime due to a system crash.
Problems such as crashed programs, chaotic codes that cannot find faults, poor product stability and weak adaptability test the team's innovation ability and patience time and time again.
"Some small problems may be that a line that needs to be connected in series is accidentally connected in parallel, or the voltage is unstable, etc. We need to check each node and line of code of the device one by one, line by line, It may take a week or two to fix some problems.” Li Mingze said, debugging tens of thousands of lines of code line by line, or simplifying models, or replacing hardware, and repairing programs have become their daily work.
The Mi machine is very large. When debugging, the team members need to put the entire upper body into the machine. The sound of the machine running is as high as 80 to 90 decibels, which makes the ears hurt after a day.
Hard work pays off.
Through continuous testing, tuning, repairing, and optimization, team members gradually achieved basic stability in equipment usage, but their goals didn't stop there.
"Our goal is to promote the development and upgrading of the rice processing industry, and we must not just be a shelf in the laboratory." Li Bing said.
With the joint efforts of team members, Li Bing's company was selected as the first batch of Heilongjiang Technology Innovation Centers in 2019, and was approved to build the "Heilongjiang Province Engineering North Rice and Rice Moderate Processing Intelligent Technology Innovation Center".
In 2020, the relevant person in charge of the Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences took the initiative to find Li Bing. In order to verify whether the equipment was "true to its name", experts from the Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences brought more than 10 kinds of rice to test the processing quality of the equipment on site.
After comparison, the processing quality of Li Bing's team's smart rice-retaining equipment is indeed higher than that of ordinary equipment.
"Every grain is hard work. We must respect the products created by nature and sweat, and put the best technology into the food processing industry." Li Bing said with emotion, using technology to escort the health of the Chinese people and contribute to food security, this is his and the goals and creeds that students have been working towards.
In the future, Li Bing's team plans to establish smart workshops and smart factories across the country, establish a number of industrial bases for moderate rice processing, promote engineering equipment to the whole country, and promote "Made in China" to the world.
Han Rong, a trainee reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily. Source: China Youth Daily