Review. Technologies for robot grippers in pick and place operations for fresh fruits and vegetables

[EN] Robotics has been introduced in industry to replace humans in arduous and repetitive tasks, to reduce labour costs and to ensure consistent quality control of the process. Nowadays robots are cheaper, can work in hostile and dirty environments and they are able to manipulate products at high sp...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Blanes Campos, Carlos|||0000-0003-1977-7429, Mellado, Martin|||0000-0002-3429-5316, Ortiz Sánchez, María Coral|||0000-0002-2744-6964, Valera Fernández, Ángel|||0000-0001-6843-6394
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2011
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV)
Repositorio:RiuNet. Repositorio Institucional de la Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:riunet.upv.es:10251/29283
Acceso en línea:https://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/29283
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Food manipulation
Horticulture grasp
Postharvest science and technology
Robotic product handling
INGENIERIA AGROFORESTAL
INGENIERIA DE SISTEMAS Y AUTOMATICA
Descripción
Sumario:[EN] Robotics has been introduced in industry to replace humans in arduous and repetitive tasks, to reduce labour costs and to ensure consistent quality control of the process. Nowadays robots are cheaper, can work in hostile and dirty environments and they are able to manipulate products at high speed. High speed and reliability and low robot gripper costs are necessary for a profitable pick and place (P&P) process. However, current grippers are not able to handle these products properly because they have uneven shapes, are flexible and irregular, have different textures and are very sensitive to being damaged. This review brings together the requirements and phases used in the process of manipulation, summarises and analyses of the existing, potential and emerging techniques and their possibilities for the manipulation of fresh horticultural products from a detailed study of their characteristics. It considers the difficulties and the lack of engineers to conceive of and implement solutions. Contact grippers with underactuated mechanism and suction cups could be a promising approach for the manipulation of fresh fruit and vegetables. Ongoing study is still necessary on the characteristics and handling requirements of fresh fruit and vegetables in order to design grippers which are suitable for correct manipulation, at high speed, in profitable P&P processes for industrial applications.