Proceedings of the 40th Chinese Control Conference

July 26-28, 2021, Shanghai, China

A Rigid-flexible Coupling Three-finger Soft Gripper for Fruit Picking

Li Li, Wenqian Tian, Zhikang OuYang, Siqi Yu, Wei Sun*
School of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, P.R. China
E-mail: elec_soft@shu.edu.cn

Abstract: In this paper, a rigid-flexible coupling three-finger soft gripper is present to grasp fruits. It can solve the problem that
the traditional rigid manipulator is easy to damage the target object and the flexible manipulator has insufficient grasping force.
A motor is used to drive the soft finger uniformly to reduce the complexity of the control system. The soft gripper system adopts
PID control algorithm to realize closed-loop control. A linkage mechanism is designed to convert the curvilinear motion driven
by the motor into linear motion. To verify the gripping performance of the soft gripper, finite element simulations and
experiments are carried out. The results show that the soft gripper has good adaptability, stability, and versatility. And its
gripping range is sufficient to cover the size of most fruits. Moreover, the soft gripper could successfully grasp fruit without
damaging fruit skin.
Key Words: soft gripper, rigid-flexible coupling, finite element analysis, motor-driven, PID control system

closed-loop control of the soft gripper system is realized by

1 Introduction
With the close integration of Internet of Things
technology and agricultural technology, the application of
smart agriculture in agricultural production has become
increasingly widespread[1, 2]. The agricultural robot is an
emerging field of smart agriculture, and also a research
hotspot in recent years[3]. It plays a significant role in
reducing human input, improving production efficiency and
product quality. As an essential category of the agricultural
robot, the fruit picking robot[4, 5] can improve operational
efficiency, reduce production costs, and realize automated
picking. As a key component of the fruit picking robot, the
end-effecter[6] is in direct contact with the target fruit.
During fruit picking, it directly affects the picking efficiency
and damage rate of fruit. It plays a key role in improving the
picking efficiency and operational stability of the fruit
picking robot. The end-effecter includes rigid manipulator
and flexible manipulator. The rigid manipulator[7] has the
characteristics of fast movement and precise control, but it is
easy to damage the fruit skin when grasping fruit. The
characteristic of the fully flexible manipulator [8-12] is that its
body is made of flexible material[13], so it has the advantages
of high structural flexibility[14] and strong environmental
adaptability[15], which can greatly reduce the damage to the
fruit skin, but its grasping force is insufficient. Therefore, a
rigid-flexible coupling soft gripper is designed.
In this paper, a rigid-flexible coupling soft gripper is
designed. It adopts a three-finger structure, which can
achieve stable grasping through force closure[16, 17], avoid
the problems of poor operability and stability of the
two-finger structure. Also, the soft gripper is driven by a
motor. The output torque of the motor is transmitted to the
soft finger through the transmission mechanism. Thereby
driving the soft finger to produce deformation. This driving
method is easy to control and has a large grasping force.
However, the motor is an open-loop control element and
cannot achieve closed-loop control. Therefore, the electrical
pulse signal is converted into rotational speed signal by the
Hall element and fed back to the system. And then, the
incremental PID control algorithm.
The rigid-flexible coupling soft gripper combines the
advantages of the rigid manipulator with large output torque,
fast movement speed, and the flexible manipulator with high
flexibility and adaptability. In the fruit picking process, it
can not only improve the picking efficiency but also reduce
the damage rate of fruit.
To achieve a stable grasping of fruit without causing
damage to the fruit skin, this paper will verify the gripping
performance of the soft gripper through finite element
simulations and experiments, including grasping range,
adaptability, and stability.
2 Structural design of the soft gripper
The soft gripper is composed of three parts: frame,
linkage mechanism and flexible finger. The 3D model of the
whole soft gripper is designed by SolidWorks, as shown in
Figure 1. As can be seen from Figure 1, the frame and
linkage mechanism are mainly composed of linkage, driving
disc, fixed disc, guide pillar, etc. Their main function is to
provide a base for the installation of various components
and realize the transmission of driving power. Among them,
the drive motor and the fixed disc are connected with other
external components (shell, fixed bracket, etc.), to ensure
the relative fixation between the motor and the fixed disc.
The drive disc moves in a straight line in the vertical
direction to drive the soft finger to deform. The motor and
the drive disc are connected by a linkage mechanism, which
can convert the circular motion of output shaft of the motor
into the linear motion of the drive disc. These three guide
pillars are evenly distributed in a circular array, one end is
fixed on the fixed disc, and the other end passes through the
hole of the drive disc, so that the drive disc can move up and
down along the guide pillars. This design can prevent the
drive disc from tilting and effectively reduce the friction
between the drive disc and the guide pillars. Besides, the
cylindrical cap at the upper end of the guide pillar plays a
limiting role to prevent excessive upward movement for the
drive disc. Furthermore, the input displacement of the soft
gripper depends on the length of the guide pillar, in this
design, the maximum movable displacement of the drive
disc is 55mm. The structural design of the single finger

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 adopts the principle of diagonal bracing in architecture[18].
This kind of space truss structure can effectively increase
the structural rigidity and improve the overall stability of the
structure, meanwhile, it can maximize the use of structural
materials and reduce cost. Moreover, the three soft fingers
are distributed in a circular array of 120° to improve the
stability of the soft gripper when grasping objects.
added according to the actual conditions. The revolute joint
between the motor and the connecting rod was applied with
a rotating load of 20°, and the rotating load increased
uniformly with the simulation time (2s).
Under no-load condition, the finite element simulation
model is shown in Figure 2. It can be seen that the three
fingers are completely "open" in the initial state. The
distance between the fingertip and the central axis is 78mm,
which can be used to grasp larger objects.

Fig. 1: Structural design of the overall soft gripper

This design method of rigid-flexible coupling avoids the
problem that the structural design of rigid manipulator is
Fig. 2: Initial state of soft gripper model (0°)
complex, the rigid structure is easy to damage the fruit skin,
and the grasping force of the flexible manipulator is Figure 3 shows the deformation of the soft fingers when
insufficient. the rotating load is 5°, 10°, 15°, and 20°. It can be seen that
The soft gripper is deformed driven by the motor, and its with the increase of the rotation angle, the soft fingers
working principle is: When the drive motor rotates forward, gradually bend and deform from the initial “fully open" state
the linkage drives the drive disc to move downwards, and to the final state. The final state is a "grasp" action similar to
piece A is deformed by the vertical downward force. The a human hand.
deformation of piece A causes piece B to be bent, thereby
forming a "grab" action. If there is a load at this time, the
soft finger touches the grasped object and produces adaptive
deformation. The inherent compliance of the soft finger
makes it better fit the grasped object, which increases the
contact area and the friction force, so as to achieve the stable
grasp of the object. Similarly, when the drive motor reverses,
the linkage drives the drive disc to move upwards to form an
"open" action. When the drive motor is powered off, the soft
finger keeps its posture unchanged. If the soft gripper is
loaded at this time, the gripping force remains constant.
3 Finite element analysis of the soft gripper
In this work, to accurately predict the mechanical
properties of the designed soft gripper, we use the finite
element analysis software ANSYS Workbench 15.0 to carry
out the finite element modeling and simulation of the soft
gripper. The 3D model designed in SolidWorks is directly
imported into ANSYS.
3.1 Simulation without grasping object
Firstly, the finite element simulation of the soft gripper Fig. 3: Total deformation under no-load (5°, 10°, 15°, 20°)
was carried out under the condition of no-load, to verify the
Figure 4 shows the change curve of the extreme value of
grasping range of the soft gripper.
deformation in the simulation process. Combining with
According to the material properties of silicone rubber,
figure 4, it can be seen that, the deformation of the upper end
the material of the soft finger was modeled as hyperelastic
of piece B of the finger is the smallest (0 mm). This is
material with Young's modulus of 4.6 Mpa, the density of
because it is fixed by the clamp. The deformation of the
1230 kg / m3, and Poisson's ratio of 0.49. Both the motor and
fingertip is the largest in the whole simulation process.
the fixed disc were subjected to restraint loads. A revolute
When the motor output shaft rotates 20°, the deformation is
joint was set between the output shaft of the motor and the
69.059mm.
connecting rod. And other restraints were sequentially

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 Fig. 4: The extreme value of the total deformation
Combined with the size design of the soft gripper, the
gripping range of the soft gripper is 8~78mm, which
basically covers the size requirements of the expected target
object.
3.2 Simulation with grasping object Fig. 5: Simulation process of the soft gripper grabbing and lifting
the object
The finite element model was used to simulate the
grasping and lifting process of the soft gripper under the The stress cloud diagram of finite element simulation is
action of natural gravity, to verify the adaptability and shown in Figure 6. The places where the equivalent stress is
stability of the designed soft gripper. larger are mainly at the contact surface between the soft
In the simulation, the soft finger was set to be flexible, its finger and the grasping object, the outward bending of the
material properties were the same as in the no-load outer wall of the finger, and the junction of the inner and
simulation, and the other parts were set to rigid. The target outer walls of the finger. The maximum equivalent stress of
object was a simplified “apple” shape with a mass of 250g, the soft finger is 0.24874MPa, which is within the range that
which was about the weight of a medium-sized fruit. In the the silicone rubber can bear. In addition, stress analysis is
initial state, the soft gripper and the target object were just in performed on the contact surface between the soft finger and
contact without the interaction force. There was a friction the grasping object separately (shown in the upper right
force between the soft gripper and the object, and the corner of Figure 6). It is found that the equivalent stress
friction coefficient was set to 0.5. The rigid plate was placed decreases gradually from the middle to both sides,
under the target object in order to support in the initial state indicating that the interaction between the soft gripper and
(equivalent to the ground). Gravity was added to the the object is mainly concentrated at the junction of the inner
simulation to simulate the real situation more realistically. and outer walls. The maximum equivalent stress on the
There were 3 load steps in the simulation, which simulated contact surface is 0.16888MPa.
the process of grasping, moving up and keeping still,
respectively.
The results are shown in Figure 5. It can be seen from
Figure 5(a) to 5(c), with the increase of the rotation angle of
the drive motor, the soft gripper gradually contacts with the
object, and then deforms adaptively. When the motor rotates
to a certain angle, a certain interaction force is generated
between the soft gripper and the object, forming a "grip"
posture. Figure 5(c) to Figure 5(d) show that after inputting
a certain displacement load (upward movement) to the soft
gripper, the soft gripper successfully grabs and lifts the
object without relative sliding.

Fig. 6: Stress cloud of the soft gripper

The simulation verifies that the soft gripper can achieve
stable grasping of object of a certain weight. The result
basically accords with the expected effect of this design, and
effectively verifies the good adaptability and stability of the
soft gripper.

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 4 Design of control system The experiment was a grasping experiment of soft gripper
on fruit. This experiment used lemon as the object of
For objects with different shapes and sizes, the soft finger grabbing, as shown in Figure 8. Figure 8 (a) showed the
needs to bend at different angles, and output angle of the initial state of the soft gripper. It can be seen that there was
motor changes accordingly. In order to ensure that the soft no contact between fingers and object. When the drive
gripper does not damage the target object during the motor output a certain rotation angle, the soft gripper
grasping process, a closed-loop control system is successfully grabbed the object without any sliding
constructed. PID control algorithm is simple, high reliability phenomenon, as shown in Figure 8 (b).
and good stability, which is enough to meet the feedback
control of motor in soft gripper system.
Incremental PID is a control algorithm based on
difference operation. The controlled quantity is gradually
close to the target value by calculating the difference
between two adjacent control quantities. According to the
formula of position PID control algorithm, the control
quantity at n-1 time is obtained as formula (1):
n 1 Td
u (n  1) K p { ¦ e(i)  (e(n  1)  e(n  2))} (1)
i 0 T
Where u(n-1) is the incremental value sampled at the time
n-1; e(i) is the deviation value sampled at the time i; Td is the
differential time constant; T is the sampling period; Ti is the
integration time constant.
From 'u n  u n u n1 , the formula (2) is:
(a) Initial state
T
'u (n) K p {e(n)  e(n  1)  K p e(n)+
Ti (2)
K pTd
(e(n)  2e(n  1)  e(n  2))}
T
T Td
Let K
i
K
p Ti
, K
d
K
p T
.K , K , K
p i d
are

proportional, integral and differential coefficients

respectively. The formula of incremental PID control is
obtained by simplifying formula (2):
'u (n) K p {e(n)  e(n  1)  K i (e(n) 
(3)
2e(n  1)  e(n  2))}
Where e(n), e(n-1), e(n-2) are the deviation values
sampled at the time n, n-1 and n-2 respectively.
When the soft gripper contacts object, the motor speed is
reduced and fed back to the host computer. Then the duty
cycle output by the single-chip microcomputer is controlled
by PID algorithm to control the motor speed. The
experimental platform is built as shown in Figure 7, and the
soft gripper is controlled by PID control algorithm to verify
the mechanical performance. The experimental platform
consists of host computer, STM32 development board,
L298N drive module, power supply and soft grippers.
Fig. 7: Experimental platform
(b) The state of successful fruit grabbing
Fig. 8: The grasping experiment of soft gripper (a) Initial state
(b) The state of successful fruit grabbing
In the experiment, when the soft finger contacts fruit, the
motor can automatically decelerate to stop, which verifies
the reliability and stability of the PID algorithm. Based on
the experiment, it can be seen that the soft gripper can
achieve stable grasping without damaging skin of the fruit.
In the experiment of fruit picking, the soft finger deforms
adaptively according to the shape and size of the grabbed
object, which verifies that the soft grasper retains its
inherent compliance. Thus, the excellent grasping
performance of the soft gripper verifies the feasibility of the
design.
5 Conclusion
In this paper, a rigid-flexible coupling three-finger soft
gripper is designed, which can be used as the end-effecter of
the fruit picking robot. The soft gripper includes soft fingers,
frame and transmission mechanism. The soft finger adopts
the principle of diagonal bracing in architecture to improve
structural rigidity and reduce material cost. The linkage

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 mechanism can realize the conversion of the movement [17] T. Watanabe, Z. W. Jiang, T. Yoshikawa. Mechanics of
mode. Incremental PID control algorithm is used for hybrid active/passive-closure grasps. IEEE Int Conf Robot,
closed-loop control of speed of the motor to realize the 1252-1257, 2014.
automatic rotation. In this paper, through the finite element [18] E. M. Lui, X. R. Zhang. Stability Design of Cross-Bracing
Systems for Frames. Eng J Ais, 50 (3), 155-168, 2013.
simulation, it is verified that the grasping range of the soft
gripper meets the expected target object size range, and the
soft gripper has excellent adaptability and stability. In
addition, we use the soft gripper and development board to
build an experimental platform for experiments.
Experimental results show that the soft gripper can
successfully grab without causing damage to the surface.
Generally speaking, the soft gripper we designed achieves
the purpose and demand of providing sufficient grasping
force while maintaining inherent compliance. In the future,
topology optimization of the soft finger structure will be
carried out to improve the overall structural performance,
and the three soft fingers will be controlled separately.
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