25 November 2024
As global demand for fruits and vegetables continues to rise, the agricultural industry faces significant challenges in securing adequate labour. Robotic harvesting devices offer a promising solution to address this issue. Harvesting delicate fruits, such as blackberries, presents unique open challenges due to their fragility.
In this work, EMERGE partners from the Delft University of Technology introduce BerryTwist, a prototype robotic gripper specifically designed for blackberry harvesting. The gripper features a fabric tube mechanism that uses motorized twisting action to gently envelop the fruit, ensuring uniform pressure application and minimizing damage. The twisting motion is transferred to the tube through a compliant mechanism, thus maintaining the overall softness of the structure.
Performance testing focused on assessing each gripper's ability to detach and release blackberries, with an emphasis on quantifying damage rates. The results indicate that the proposed gripper achieved an 82% success rate in detaching blackberries and a 95% success rate in releasing them, demonstrating its promising potential for robotic harvesting applications.
Read the paper in the link below.
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