Soft Robotic Grippers for Crop Handling or Harvesting: A Review

Nowadays, harvesting delicate and high-value fruits, vegetables edible fungi requires a large input of manual human labor. The relatively low wages many health problems the workforce faces make this profession increasingly unpopular. Meanwhile, robotic systems that selectively harvest crops are being developed. Whilst moving platform, manipulator, recognition such robots studied past few decades, research on gripping end is only recently growing. This study analyses state-of-the-art soft grippers for crop handling harvesting, reporting their quantitative qualitative characteristics. Seventy-eight retrieved from academic literature compared with each other in terms design reported performance, more specifically grasping detachment methods, materials used, type actuators sensors employed, control procedure. In addition, identified classified into 13 distinct technology categories. Moreover, papers analyzed respect to publication date country origin observe recent growth field. Furthermore, subset was tested task crops, where grip success rates plant damage compared.