Starfish-Inspired Scooping Soft Gripper for Cluster Grasping Applications

The increasing demand for food production cou-pled with a shortage of labor in the agricultural sector has underscored the critical need for capable autonomous grasping solutions. This presents a formidable research challenge due to the unstructured and delicate nature of agricultural environments. Soft grippers, with their hyperelastic material properties, offer an ideal solution for handling delicate harvests without causing damage, all while obviating the need for precise force control. Current robotic end-effectors employed in harvesting tasks predominantly consist of finger-based grippers, which are effective for picking objects one at a time but fall short when dealing with crops that grow in clusters. The drive for automation in agriculture necessitates productivity levels that can at least match human capabilities like han-dling multiple items in a single grasp. In response to this challenge, this study presents the design and fabrication of a scooping suction-based gripper, drawing inspiration from the shape and feeding mechanism observed in common starfish. This innovative gripper shows potential for cluster grasping applications, thereby enhancing productivity in agricultural harvesting processes. The efficacy of the gripper design elements was validated through finite element analysis, force testing, and grasping experiments using representative objects.