Innovative Soft-Rigid Gripper Design Published in IEEE RA-L

Oct 9, 2025 1 min read

A paper led by PhD student Lichao Yang, titled “High-Tolerance Soft-Rigid Gripper for Low-Damage Robotic Strawberry Harvesting,” has been published in the prestigious journal IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L).

The paper presents a novel hybrid soft-rigid gripper design. Its structure adapts to fruit shape, tolerates positioning errors, and achieves very low damage rates, marking a significant advancement for reliable harvesting end-effectors.

Congratulations to the authors!

Ya Xiong
Ya Xiong
Research Professor

My research interests include agricultural robotics, manipulator design, computer vision and path planning.