Designing a robotic gripper for harvesting horticulture products

Abstract

This paper approaches the design problem of suitable grippers for a robotic arm to pick up horticulture products. General considerations have been pointed out and main concepts and mechanical designs have been discussed and proposed by sketches and drawings for an easy understanding of “on-field” problems and feasible solutions. Pneumatic actuation has been proposed with suitable grasp force control by using commercial components. Specific attention has been focused on tomato horticulture for a practical design and prototyping of a device for laboratory experiments.