A fuzzy controlled pneumatic gripper for asparagus harvesting

Abstract The paper presents a grasping unit for asparagus harvesting based on a commercially available pneumatic gripper. Highly reliable low-cost tactile sensors were developed to determine contact pressure during grasping. Experimental tests were conducted on all system components in order to achieve a thorough knowledge of the physical ptsenomena which determine system behaviour. A fuzzy control system was developed on the basis of this experimental data. The paper then presents and discusses experimental data for grasping tests with different sizes of asparagus and different reference contact pressures to demonstrate the versatility and robustness of the system.