Human evaluation of robotic grippers for berry picking

Abstract

We describe the construction and evaluation of two robotic grippers for berry picking. Using a pneumatic cylinder drive, one was constructed from hard materials and the other from soft materials. A novel evaluation paradigm using a handle mechanism was developed, so the grippers could be directly op-erated by human participants. An artificial bush was also constructed and used for evaluation purposes. Overall, both grippers performed worse than the human hand, indicating that further development is needed.