SoftGrip: Towards a Soft Robotic Platform for Automatized Mushroom Harvesting

Niccolò Pagliarani, Costas S. Tzafestas, Evangelos Papadopoulos, Petros Maragos, Athanasios S. Mastrogeorgiou, Antonios Porichis, Helen Grogan, Robin Ehrhardt, Matteo Cianchetti

Abstract: The fresh food industry significantly depends on manual labor, which can make up to 40% of total production costs. Until now, implementing safe robotic automation for gently harvesting fresh produce has been difficult due to the complex and delicate nature of these tasks. The EU-funded SoftGrip Project aims to revolutionize the fresh food sector with technological advancements. By integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic automation, it is possible to achieve gentle harvesting, enhance productivity, and lower labor costs for small and medium-sized European mushroom farms. The innovative smart soft gripper, designed to learn skills from expert harvesters through imitation learning, seeks to provide an economically feasible, scalable, and environmentally friendly solution, transforming the mushroom cultivation industry and the wider fruit market.