Driven by the increasing food demand and the need for higher-quality cultivation, precision agriculture grows steadily during the last decade. It involves the application of mobile robots and intelligent robotic technologies in various agricultural field tasks, concerning a variety of crop types. Aiming at compensating for the lack of selective robotic harvesting solutions … [Read more...] about Robotic Grape Inspection and Selective Harvesting in Vineyards: A Multisensory Robotic System With Advanced Cognitive Capabilities
Grippers
Synthesis, Design, and Experimental Validation of an Agile Wrist for Enhanced Grasping and Manipulation in Cluttered Environments: An Experimental Evaluation With a Challenging Pick-and-Place Task
In many practical cases, such as in logistics applications, grasping and manipulation of objects must be carried out in confined spaces with obstacles. Limited room is then available to manoeuvre and robotic devices can lack dexterity or be impaired by their size when performing in such cluttered environments. In this paper, we address this issue by proposing a novel agile … [Read more...] about Synthesis, Design, and Experimental Validation of an Agile Wrist for Enhanced Grasping and Manipulation in Cluttered Environments: An Experimental Evaluation With a Challenging Pick-and-Place Task
SofToss: Learning to Throw Objects With a Soft Robot
In this paper, we present, for the first time, a soft robot control system (SofToss) capable of throwing life-size objects toward target positions. SofToss is an open-loop controller based on deep reinforcement learning that generates, given the target position, an actuation pattern for the tossing task. To deal with the high non-linearity of the dynamics of soft robots, we … [Read more...] about SofToss: Learning to Throw Objects With a Soft Robot
Variable Stiffness, Sensing, and Healing in FESTO’s FinRay Gripper: An Industry-Driven Design
Soft grippers' rising popularity in industries is due to their impressive adaptability. Yet, this adaptability requires flexibility which often sacrifices grip firmness and complicates sensor integration. This paper introduces two additional innovations, variable stiffness and pneumatic sensing, into a FinRay adaptive gripper. The approach and design for incorporating these … [Read more...] about Variable Stiffness, Sensing, and Healing in FESTO’s FinRay Gripper: An Industry-Driven Design
Fully Autonomous Brick Pick and Place in Fields by Articulated Aerial Robot: Results in Various Outdoor Environments
Picking and placing of objects by aerial robots in fields is an important and challenging task for a range of outdoor activities, including industry and rescue operations. General strategies depend on the magnetic force to the pick object; however, this approach lacks both generality and robustness. Therefore, we focus on an articulated structure to grasp bricking. Another … [Read more...] about Fully Autonomous Brick Pick and Place in Fields by Articulated Aerial Robot: Results in Various Outdoor Environments
