An Adaptive Soft Gripper for Fruit Harvesting

Sun Young Moon, Myun Joong Hwang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

In fruit harvesting, a gripper capable of grasping fruit should be attached to the manipulator. We propose an adaptive soft gripper that can flexibly respond to irregular shapes of fruits. To enable stable gripping and to flexibly deform the gripper to adapt the fruit’s shape, we designed the gripper with both rigid and soft components. We adapted the screw motion as the operating method, which can transform the motor’s rotational motion into a linear one. To make a rigid finger that includes a soft link, silicon was cast on a mold manufactured using 3-D printing. According to the step in which the gripper grasps the fruit, the core vertically moves up and down through screw motion. To reduce damage to the fruit, pressure sensors are attached to the gripper to adjust gripping force based on sensor data. The experiment was conducted by pulling the fruit with a force comparable to that applied when separating it from a branch, simulating the actual harvesting process. After that, we evaluated the gripper's performance based on the experiment’s results. In conclusion, the gripper is expected to be able to exert gripping pressure that does not damage the fruit and the enough force to separate the fruit and stem.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)664-670
Number of pages7
JournalJournal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
Volume28
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - 2022

Keywords

  • Agricultural Robot
  • Harvesting
  • Soft Gripper

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