Soft Grippers for Automatic Crop Harvesting: A Review

Agriculture 4.0 is transforming farming livelihoods thanks to the development and adoption of technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and robotics, traditionally used in other productive sectors. Soft robotics and soft grippers in particular are promising approaches to lead to new solutions in this field due to the need to meet hygiene and manipulation requirements in unstructured environments and in operation with delicate products. This review aims to provide an in-depth look at soft end-effectors for agricultural applications, with a special emphasis on robotic harvesting. To that end, the current state of automatic picking tasks for several crops is analysed, identifying which of them lack automatic solutions, and which methods are commonly used based on the botanical characteristics of the fruits. The latest advances in the design and implementation of soft grippers are also presented and discussed, studying the properties of their materials, their manufacturing processes, the gripping technologies and the proposed control methods. Finally, the challenges that have to be overcome to boost its definitive implementation in the real world are highlighted. Therefore, this review intends to serve as a guide for those researchers working in the field of soft robotics for Agriculture 4.0, and more specifically, in the design of soft grippers for fruit harvesting robots.