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Design and Development of a Tomato Picking Soft Robotic Gripper with a Separator and Mechanical Iris Based Pedicel Cutting Mechanism

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Advances in System-Integrated Intelligence (SYSINT 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 546))

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Abstract

Picking tomatoes from plants in farm fields using an autonomous robotic gripper is a challenging problem especially when tomatoes are present in the form of a dense cluster as multiple aspects have to be kept in mind while doing the successful operation to prevent them from any kind of damage. Here we have proposed a novel compliant and soft robotic gripper with fingers in the form of curved beams made up of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) with a separating mechanism for picking target tomato from a cluster attached with a pedicel cutting mechanical iris mechanism having sharp blades. To actuate the gripper fingers a servo motor pulls them through a set of fishing lines. A comparison is drawn for the variation of fingertip positions, velocities, angle w.r.t time, and trajectory followed obtained through kinematic equations and motion tracking through a camera. Finally, a comparative analysis is done for the variation of separating, cutting, grasping, and total operation time w.r.t tomato sample diameter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, 208016, India

    Shahid Ansari & Bishakh Bhattacharya

Authors
  1. Shahid Ansari
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  2. Bishakh Bhattacharya
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shahid Ansari .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical, Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering and Naval Architecture (DITEN), University of Genova, Genoa, Italy

    Maurizio Valle

  2. Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials, Bremen, Germany

    Dirk Lehmhus

  3. Department of Electrical, Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering and Naval Architecture (DITEN), University of Genova, Genoa, Italy

    Christian Gianoglio

  4. Department of Electrical, Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering and Naval Architecture (DITEN), University of Genova, Genoa, Italy

    Edoardo Ragusa

  5. Department of Electrical, Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering and Naval Architecture (DITEN), University of Genova, Genoa, Italy

    Lucia Seminara

  6. Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Stefan Bosse

  7. Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE), Lebanese International University (LIU), Beirut, Lebanon

    Ali Ibrahim

  8. BIBA, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Klaus-Dieter Thoben

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Ansari, S., Bhattacharya, B. (2023). Design and Development of a Tomato Picking Soft Robotic Gripper with a Separator and Mechanical Iris Based Pedicel Cutting Mechanism. In: Valle, M., et al. Advances in System-Integrated Intelligence. SYSINT 2022. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 546. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16281-7_27

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16281-7_27

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-16280-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-16281-7

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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