Tendon-Driven Soft Robotic Gripper for Berry Harvesting
This addresses the high labor costs and berry damage in fresh market berry harvesting, offering a robotic solution with incremental improvements in force control and reliability.
The researchers tackled the problem of hand-harvesting berries, which is costly and causes significant damage, by developing a tendon-driven soft robotic gripper with active force feedback control, achieving a harvesting reliability of 95% and a rate of 4.8 seconds per berry with minimal damage.
Global berry production and consumption have significantly increased in recent years, coinciding with increased consumer awareness of the health-promoting benefits of berries. Among them, fresh market blackberries and raspberries are primarily harvested by hand to maintain post-harvest quality. However, fresh market berry harvesting is an arduous, costly endeavor that accounts for up to 50% of the worker hours. Additionally, the inconsistent forces applied during hand-harvesting can result in an 85% loss of marketable berries due to red drupelet reversion (RDR). Herein, we present a novel, tendon-driven soft robotic gripper with active contact force feedback control, which leverages the passive compliance of the gripper for the gentle harvesting of blackberries. The versatile gripper was able to apply a desired force as low as 0.5 N with a mean error of 0.046 N, while also holding payloads that produce forces as high as 18 N. Field test results indicate that the gripper is capable of harvesting berries with minimal berry damage, while maintaining a harvesting reliability of 95% and a harvesting rate of approximately 4.8 seconds per berry.