Towards Continuous Acoustic Tactile Soft Sensing

Acoustic Soft Tactile (AST) skin is a novel sensing technology that uses deformations of the acoustic channels beneath the sensing surface to predict static normal forces and their contact locations. AST skin functions by sensing the changes in the modulation of the acoustic waves travelling through the channels as they deform due to the forces acting on the skin surface. Our previous study tested different AST skin designs for three discrete sensing points and selected two designs that better predicted the forces and contact locations. This paper presents a study of the sensing capability of these two AST skin designs with continuous sensing points with a spatial resolution of 6 mm. Our findings indicate that the AST skin with a dual-channel geometry outperformed the single-channel type during calibration. The dual-channel design predicted more than 90% of the forces within a ± 3 N tolerance and was 84.2% accurate in predicting contact locations with ± 6 mm resolution. In addition, the dual-channel AST skin demonstrated superior performance in a real-time pushing experiment over an off-the-shelf soft tactile sensor. These results demonstrate the potential of using AST skin technology for real-time force sensing in various applications, such as human-robot interaction and medical diagnosis

Peduncle Gripping and Cutting Force for Strawberry Harvesting Robotic end-effector Design

Robotic harvesting of strawberries has gained much interest in the recent past. Although there are many innovations, they haven’t yet reached a level that is comparable to an expert human picker. The end effector unit plays a major role in defining the efficiency of such a robotic harvesting system. Even though there are reports on various end effectors for strawberry harvesting, but there they lack a picture of certain parameters that the researchers can rely upon to develop new end effectors. These parameters include the limit of gripping force that can be applied on the peduncle for effective gripping, the force required to cut the strawberry peduncle, etc. These estimations would be helpful in the design cycle of the end effectors that target to grip and cut the strawberry peduncle during the harvesting action. This paper studies the estimation and analysis of these parameters experimentally. It has been estimated that the peduncle gripping force can be limited to 10 N. This enables an end effector to grip a strawberry of mass up to 50 grams with a manipulation acceleration of 50 m/s2 without squeezing the peduncle. The study on peduncle cutting force reveals that a force of 15 N is sufficient to cut strawberry peduncle using a blade with a wedge angle of 16.60 at 300 orientation

Tactile-Sensing Technologies: Trends, Challenges and Outlook in Agri-Food Manipulation

Tactile sensing plays a pivotal role in achieving precise physical manipulation tasks and extracting vital physical features. This comprehensive review paper presents an in-depth overview of the growing research on tactile-sensing technologies, encompassing state-of-the-art techniques, future prospects, and current limitations. The paper focuses on tactile hardware, algorithmic complexities, and the distinct features offered by each sensor. This paper has a special emphasis on agri-food manipulation and relevant tactile-sensing technologies. It highlights key areas in agri-food manipulation, including robotic harvesting, food item manipulation, and feature evaluation, such as fruit ripeness assessment, along with the emerging field of kitchen robotics. Through this interdisciplinary exploration, we aim to inspire researchers, engineers, and practitioners to harness the power of tactile-sensing technology for transformative advancements in agri-food robotics. By providing a comprehensive understanding of the current landscape and future prospects, this review paper serves as a valuable resource for driving progress in the field of tactile sensing and its application in agri-food systems

Selective Harvesting Robots: A Review

Climate change and population growth have created significant challenges for global food production, and ensuring food security requires a resilient food-production system. One of the most labour-intensive tasks in agriculture and food production is selective harvesting, which is vulnerable to risks such as a shortage of adequate labour force. To address this challenge, there is a growing need for robots that can deliver precise and efficient harvesting operations. However, developing robots for selective harvesting presents several technological challenges and raises a range of intriguing scientific questions. This paper provides an overview of the available robotic technologies for the selective harvesting of high-value crops and discusses the latest advancements and challenges in the relevant technology domains, including robotic hardware, robot perception, robot planning, and robot control. Additionally, this paper presents several open research questions that can serve as a research focus for further development in this field

Applications of robotic and solar energy in precision agriculture and smart farming

Population growth, healthy diet requirements, and changes in food demand towards a more plant-based protein diet increase existing pressures for food production and land-use change. The increasing demand and current agriculture approaches jeopardise the health of soil and biodiversity which will affect the future ecosystem and food production. One of the solutions to the increasing pressure on agriculture is PA which offers to minimize the use of resources, including land, water, energy, herbicides, and pesticides, and maximise the yield. The development of PA requires a multidisciplinary approach including engineering, AI, and robotics. Robots will play a crucial role in delivering PA and will pave the way toward sustainable healthy food production. While PA is the way forward in the agriculture industry the related devices to collect various supporting data and also the agriculture machinery need to be run by clean energy to ensure sustainable growth in the sector. Among renewable energy sources, solar energy and solar PV have shown a great potential to dominate the future of sustainable energy and agriculture developments. For developing PV in rural and off-grid agriculture farms and lands the use of solar-powered devices is unavoidable. Such a transition to photovoltaic agriculture requires significant changes to agricultural practices and the adoption of smart technologies like IoT, robotics, and WSN. Future food production needs to adapt to changing consumer behaviour along with the rapidly deteriorating environmental factors. PA is also a response to future food production challenges where one of its key aims is to improve sustainability to minimize the use of diminishing resources and minimize GHG emissions by use of renewable energy sources. Along with these adaptations, the new technologies should be using green energy sources (i.e., solar energy) for meeting the power requirements for sustainable developments of these smart technologies. Since there is a rapid inflow of robotic technologies into the agriculture sector, increasing power demand is inevitable, especially in remote areas where PV-based systems can play a game-changing role. It is expected for the agriculture sector to witness a technological revolution toward sustainable food production which cannot be achieved without solar PV development and support