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Soft robotics for agriculture

02.10.2021

"Soft" robots are made of malleable materials such as silicone and other polymers, rather than metal. These materials give the robots organic characteristics, replicating the work of muscles and allowing them to move and do work instead of a human that old metal machines can't.

A particular application of soft robotics that I was interested in was agriculture. Most automatic harvesting solutions only deal with large and hard crops. There are several mechanisms for picking smaller crops, but many are tough and can damage the plant in the process. Some success has come from companies such as Soft Robotics Inc, which have created grippers with soft features. But they were still only able to work with harder crops. These difficulties led to a research project in which I participated. The aim of the project was to explore the possibility of autonomous picking of light fragile berries, in particular raspberries. This task required a unique grip. Given the fragility of raspberries, this problem could be solved with the help of soft robotics.

The idea that arose was to create a tubular structure that would move towards the berry bush and separate each raspberry from its neighbors.

The end effector slides up the stem of the berry, after which the soft robotic bags come to work, which do not directly capture the fruit. Instead, they lightly press on the back of the berry, which connects to the plant's peduncle. Then the entire tube moves away, displacing the berry from the stem. It is similar to how a person pulls a berry with his fingers.

The innovations associated with the creation of robots that resemble the human body coincide with the development of the brain of robots. Advances in artificial intelligence are allowing machines to detect feelings like happiness and sadness in speech. Research is also focused on developing computer vision technologies that can detect emotions by analyzing facial expressions.

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