3232 IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 27, NO.

5, OCTOBER 2022

Sensorized Reconfigurable Soft Robotic Gripper

System for Automated Food Handling
Jin Huat Low , Phone May Khin , Qian Qian Han , Haicheng Yao, Yee Seng Teoh, Yadan Zeng, Si Li,
Jun Liu , Zhuangjian Liu , Pablo Valdivia y Alvarado , Member, IEEE, I-Ming Chen , Fellow, IEEE,
Benjamin Chee Keong Tee, and Raye Chen Hua Yeow, Member, IEEE

Abstract—This article presents a versatile soft robotic
gripper system whereby its fingers can be reconfigured into
different poses such as scoop, pinch, and claw. This allows
the gripper to efficiently and safely handle food samples
of different shapes, sizes and stiffness such as uncooked
tofu and broccoli floret. The 3D-printed fingers were tested
to last up to 25 000 cycles without significant changes in
the curvature profile and force output profile. A benchmark
experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of
the gripper and state-of-the-art gripping solutions. Capabil-
ity of versatile soft gripper was optimized by integrating
vision and tactile sensing facilities. An object recognition
system was developed to identify food samples such as
potato, broccoli, and sausage. Position and orientation of
food samples were identified and pick-and-place pathway
was optimized to achieve the best gripping performance.
Flexible tactile sensors were integrated into soft fingers and
closed-loop force feedback control system was developed.
This allowed the gripper to automatically explore and se-
lect the most stable grip pose for different food samples.
Integration of vision and force feedback system ensure that
objects detected by the system would be firmly gripped.
The reconfigurable soft robotic gripper system has been
Manuscript received 2 August 2020; revised 14 December 2020 and
11 June 2021; accepted 28 August 2021. Date of publication 28 Septem-
ber 2021; date of current version 17 October 2022. Recommended by
Technical Editor M. Grebenstein and Senior Editor G. Alici. This work
was supported by the National Robotics Programme – Robotics En-
abling Capabilities and Technologies under Grant R-261-506-027-305
and Grant R-261-506-034-305. (Jin Huat Low and Phone May Khin
contributed equally to this work.) (Corresponding author: Jin Huat Low.)
Jin Huat Low, Phone May Khin, Qian Qian Han, and Raye Chen Hua
Yeow are with the Advanced Robotics Centre, Department of Biomedical
Engineering, National University of Singapore, 639798, Singapore (e-
mail: bieljhu@nus.edu.sg; biekpm@nus.edu.sg; e0323794@u.nus.edu;
rayeow@nus.edu.sg).
Haicheng Yao, Si Li, and Benjamin Chee Keong Tee are with the
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National University
of Singapore, 117575, Singapore (e-mail: haicheng.yao@u.nus.edu;
si.li@u.nus.edu; benjamin.tee@nus.edu.sg).
Yee Seng Teoh, Yadan Zeng, and I-Ming Chen are with the Robotics
Research Centre, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineer-
ing, Nanyang Technological University, 639798, Singapore (e-mail:
ysteoh@ntu.edu.sg; yadan.zeng@ntu.edu.sg; michen@ieee.org).
Jun Liu and Zhuangjian Liu are with the Institute of High Performance
Computing, A∗STAR Research Entities, 138632, Singapore (e-mail:
liuj@ihpc.a-star.edu.sg; liuzj@ihpc.a-star.edu.sg).
Pablo Valdivia y Alvarado is with the Digital Manufacturing and De-
sign Centre, Singapore University of Technology and Design Singapore,
487372, Singapore (e-mail: pablov@sutd.edu.sg).
This article has supplementary material provided by the authors and
color versions of one or more figures available at https://doi.org/10.1109/
TMECH.2021.3110277.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMECH.2021.3110277
1083-4435 © 2021 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
demonstrated to perform high-speed pick-and-place tasks
(∼3 s per item) with object recognition system, making it a
potential solution to food and grocery supply chain needs.
Index Terms—Gripping and manipulation, soft actuators
and sensors, soft robotics systems.
I. INTRODUCTION
VER the years, the field of robotics has been advancing
O tremendously to address the growing demand for greater
efficiency and productivity in many manufacturing industries.
For instance, in food manufacturing, traditional rigid grippers
and vacuum systems are used for food picking and packaging for
automation process [1]. However, these grippers have difficulties
to perform such tasks well because rigidity of the grippers may
damage delicate food samples without adequate force control
system and vacuum packaging system can only lift items with
clean flat smooth surfaces [2].
As such, to extend the application of robotic system to cope
with high variability and delicacy of food samples, there brings
about an emerging market for application of soft robots in
the automated food handling sector. These robots possess the
capability to manipulate themselves by morphing according to
the external reaction forces, rather than going against them [3].
This feature is useful in accommodating a diverse range of
fragile items without adding cost and complexity to the existing
system. Various soft robotic grippers have since been developed
to handle delicate objects such as biological tissues [4], [5],
marine species [6], [7], raw egg [8], [9], and fruits [10].
Apart from their unique compliance and flexibility character-
istics, soft robotic actuators such as elastomeric actuators, fabric-
based actuators and 3D-printed actuators [11]–[13] are also
manufactured at lower production cost than conventional rigid
gripper structures. With increasing popularity of soft robotics,
soft grippers have emerged in the market, such as Suzhou Rochu
Robotics Company, Ltd. and Soft Robotics Inc. However, state-
of-the-art soft grippers have prefixed finger placements [6]–[10].
Grip poses can only be adjusted by manually exchanging the
mounting bases and finger actuators, which are provided in
different sizes. The low dexterity of grip pose configuration
limits the applicability of these grippers to complex handling
processes.
Various research groups have previously proposed solu-
tions that include three-fingered or four-fingered grippers with

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LOW et al.: SENSORIZED RECONFIGURABLE SOFT ROBOTIC GRIPPER SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATED FOOD HANDLING
reconfigurable finger modules [1], [14], [15]. However, these
grippers do not allow decoupled reconfiguration of individual
finger module, because the proposed mechanisms only permit
simultaneous or coupled reconfiguration of all finger modules.
These grippers also do not allow adjustable linear displacement
of individual finger module. This limits the gripping space
of the gripper which needs to be more dynamic, especially
in the handling of food samples. The limitations in state-of-
the-art grippers allow for a novel solution that incorporates a
lightweight, compact gripper with individually reconfigurable
finger module. This allows our proposed gripper to perform pick-
and-place tasks with high efficiency and accuracy, especially
during handling of food samples that often come in different
physical shapes and sizes.
While reconfigurability of the gripper improves the dynamic
gripping range and is useful in handling irregular shaped items,
it also brings about new complications. For instance, there is an
additional challenge of requiring manual inspection of different
finger orientations to select the most suitable grip pose for an
object. This brings about a new risk of operation complexity.
To mitigate this issue, this article devised a computational
framework, which allows the proposed gripper to automatically
inspect and determine the most stable pose to pick an item.
This framework leverages on flexible tactile sensors, which were
integrated on the fingers of the gripper. In addition, vision-based
object detection model was also developed to enhance the au-
tonomy of the robot during pick-and-place tasks.
In this article, we present a soft robotic gripper system that
consists of three 3D-printed soft pneumatic actuators and re-
configurable gripper base for versatile gripping. Object detection
and sensing system are established to identify the location of the
items and best grip pose to handle the items. The contributions
of this article are listed as the following:
1) A 3D-printed actuator that is optimized for food han-
dling is proposed. While 3D-printed actuators [16], [17]
have been proposed for soft robotic applications, their
proposed fold-based bellow actuator designs [16] tend
to result in overbending at air pressure required to grip
the object firmly, which are not suitable to manipulate
small, delicate food samples. The unique bellow design of
our proposed 3D-printed actuator prevents overbending,
allowing for better grip while maintaining dexterity and
delicacy of the grip.
2) A real time grip pose exploration technique (Grip Pose
Comparator, GPC) using integrated tactile sensors is de-
veloped. This allows the gripper to automatically recon-
figure and search for a stable pose to handle food samples
of different shapes and sizes.
3) While most current gripper solutions solely focus on the
picking action of individual object, our solution incor-
porates a vision system to identify the category of the
object and 6-D target object pose in piles of similar
food samples, and thereafter, determine an optimized path
to achieve best gripping performance. In addition, we
propose a novel adaptive pick-and-place motion strategy
to reduce the duration of the interaction between vision
system and robot motion. A dual thread was executed
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3233
Fig. 1. (a) Schematic of 3D-printed actuator made of NinjaFlex fila-
ment (units in mm) and the food-safe sleeve. (b) Simulation model of
gripper gripping potato with different finger actuator designs.
to process the images acquisition and motion trajectory
independently.
II. METHODS
A. 3D-printed Finger Actuator
The finger actuator with two types of bellow designs was
directly 3D-printed with a type of thermoplastic elastomers,
NinjaFlex filament (NinjaTek, Manheim, PA) [see Fig. 1(a)].
The proximal end has three bellows with smaller width and air
channel while the distal end has two bellows with a larger width
and in-built air channels. Compared to most of the contemporary
soft grippers that have been developed with elastomeric material
such as Ecoflex 00-30 (Young’s modulus of 0.125 MPa) [18],
Ninjaflex has a higher elastic modulus of 12 MPa [19]. The
increase in stiffness of the actuator material enhances the rigidity
of the finger actuators while still maintaining the softness aspect.
This allows the soft robotic gripper to gently grip delicate objects
and yet still achieve higher gripping stability, which enables the
gripper to perform pick and place tasks of the objects under
fast moving conditions. The printing parameters such as layer
height and nozzle temperature were presented in our previous
work [17].
Various actuator designs such as fold-based design [16] and
design with uniform bellows [17] have been proposed for soft
manipulation. However, these designs may not be optimized for
handling small food samples with irregular shapes and sizes. The
fold-based finger actuators tend to result in overbending even at
air pressure lesser than 100 kPa, as illustrated in Fig. 1(b). This
compromises the grip stability especially in pinch configuration
as these overbent actuators push the gripped items towards one
side. The unique bellow design of the actuators used in this
article was optimized to provide better grip [see Fig. 1(b)]. The
artificial neural network model and multiobjective optimization
to optimize the finger actuator design by varying the width of the
bellows and dimensions of the air channels inside the bellows
3234
Fig. 2. Experimental set-up of (a) bending force and (b) bending profile
test.
are beyond the scope of this article, which will be addressed in
another one.
A custom-made consumer product safety improvement act-
certified food-safe waterproof polyurethane laminate fabric
sleeve (Wazoodle Fabrics, Bensalem, PA, USA) with bellow
folds was fabricated to house the actuator (see Fig. 1).
Important parameters such as bending force, bending profile
and durability were investigated to characterize the performance
of the finger actuator. The bending force and bending profile
corresponding to various air pressures, ranging from 0 kPa to
300 kPa, were recorded at incremental steps of 25 kPa. Three
actuators were used to obtain average data at each pneumatic
pressure. The bending force was measured directly from a 5 N
load cell [see Fig. 2(a)]. To analyze the bending profile of the
actuator, we assessed the bending angle of the inflated actuator
with image analysis software, Tracker. The bending angle (θ)
was measured by obtaining the angle between the vertical axis
and the line in red on the distal tip of the inflated actuator [see
Fig. 2(b)].
In the durability test, the actuator was tested up to 25 000
cycles of inflation under 300 kPa of supplied air pressure, with
5 s inflation and 5 s deflation. A system with one miniature
pneumatic solenoid valve (Parker Hannifin, Cleveland, OH,
USA) and one pneumatic pressure sensor was used. The valve
was connected directly to a compressor, which supplied pressure
of 300 kPa. The valve was programmed to turn on for 5 s and turn
OFF for 5 s. The pressure sensor was connected to the actuator
in order to record the air pressure value upon inflation.
B. Reconfigurable Soft Robotic Gripper
The gripper consists of three finger modules (see Fig. 3) and
it weighs about 760 g (excluding control box). Configuration
of the gripper fingers are adjustable through its reconfigurable
base. The position of the thumb of the gripper was adjusted with
a stepper motor linear actuator, which allows linear displacement
of up to 20 mm. The remaining two finger modules were attached
to the other two stepper motors, respectively. This allows them to
rotate about the center of the fingers’ actuation workspace with
angular displacement up to 150° (see Fig. 3). Adjustability of
the fingers arrangement allows the gripper to manipulate more
variety of objects with different finger configurations such as
scoop (both fingers placed closest to the thumb), pinch (two of
the fingers placed at an angle of 180° from the thumb) and claw
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IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 27, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2022
Fig. 3. Schematic of the various grip poses.
(all three fingers placed at various degrees apart). The finger
modules were designed such that they can be easily detached
and replaced with other modules to accommodate a wider range
of gripping width (30 mm–70 mm) in order to cope with objects
with different shapes. Each module has a built-in air channel,
which allows the finger module to be replaced easily without
changing the air connection. The stepper motors were connected
to a driver respectively and a microcontroller board such that
the degrees of rotation and distance of linear motion of finger
modules can be programmed.
In contrast, mechanical grippers are limited by their size
and freedom of movement [14], [15]. Compared to OpenHand
Model O [14], the proposed reconfigurable gripper base is more
compact. The base height is 39 mm and the base width of the
proposed gripper is 78 mm × 105 mm, while the base height
and width of the OpenHand are 90 mm and 100–125 mm, which
is relatively bulky for the handling of small food samples. In
addition, the gripping spaces is fixed, and the finger modules
can only be adjusted through rotation along the axis of the
motor. Linear displacement of finger modules further allows
expansion and retraction of gripping workspace, should the
bending curvature of fingers be insufficient. In the application of
pick-and-place tasks for food samples, the advantage of linear
displacement was demonstrated in our study where the proposed
gripper was used to grip a raspberry and tangerine using the same
grip pose with linear motion of the thumb (refer to submitted
video).
The actuation control system consists of one miniature pneu-
matic solenoid valve (Parker Hannifin, Cleveland, OH, USA)
and one pneumatic pressure sensor. The pneumatic air channel
LOW et al.: SENSORIZED RECONFIGURABLE SOFT ROBOTIC GRIPPER SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATED FOOD HANDLING
Fig. 4. Schematic of the tactile sensing element.
of all the actuators was connected to a valve. Therefore, grip-
ping and releasing of object were controlled by triggering the
valve accordingly. Pneumatic inlet of the valve was connected
to a portable compressor, which delivers compressed air at a
maximum flow rate of 35–40 L/min and supplies pressure up to
600 kPa.
C. Flexible Tactile Sensor
Tactile sensor was made by coating a thin layer of PE-
DOT: PSS (Heraeus, Hanau, Germany) on microstructured poly-
dimethylsiloxane (PDMS). First, a silicon (Si) wafer mold with
the pattern of micropyramidal structures was fabricated through
standard lithography process. PDMS and its cross-linker, Syl-
gard 184 (Dow Corning, Midland, MI, USA) were mixed in
a weight ratio of 10:1 and molded on Si wafer to form the
micropyramdial surface [20]. Molded PDMS film was then
plasma-treated for 30 s, followed by the coating of PEDOT:
PSS, which was premixed with 5 wt% DMSO and 0.1 wt%
Zonyl FS-300 [21], [22]. The PDMS film with the coating
layer was cured at 80 °C for 1 h. Next, interdigital copper
(Cu) electrodes were fabricated on polyimide (PI) substrate.
The interdigital pattern of wax was printed onto the Cu/PI
foil by a solid-ink printer (ColorQube 8880). Submerged in
copper etchant (mixture of 37% hydrochloric acid and 3 wt%
hydrogen peroxide solution) for 15 min, the exposed Cu was
fully etched while the wax-covered pattern remained. The rest
wax was further removed by isopropyl alcohol to leave the
interdigital Cu electrodes on PI. The PDMS film (6 mm × 6
mm) was then assembled with electrodes with the PEDOT:PSS
layer contacting with Cu to form the tactile sensor (see Fig. 4).
The sensor was characterized using a motorized z-axis stage
(Newmark) assembled with a force gauge (Mark-10 5i). A
force of 5 N (corresponding to the pressure of 140 kPa)
was applied on the sensor at a loading rate of 5 μm/s, and
meanwhile the resistance of the sensor was recorded by a
source meter (Keithley 2450). Sensor reliability during cyclic
loading was studied by applying the same force at a higher
loading rate (500 μm/s) on the sensor. A time interval of ∼5
s was set between 2 cycles to simulate the gripping cycles
during pick-and-place tasks. Sensor response time was also
studied by applying a small load using blue tack, which cor-
responds to the pressure of 100 Pa on the sensor. The response
time was defined as the fall time of resistance change during
unloading.
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3235
D. Sensorized Grip Pose Analysis
In food packing environments, food samples come in different
shapes, sizes, and orientations. For a gripper with fixed finger
position, it is a challenge to consistently maintain stable contact
between the food item and fingers. In addition, food samples
may not always be neatly arranged in a bin so that they can
be easily picked by the gripper. Hence, the choice of optimal
grip pose changes with physical shape of the food item and the
orientation of its layout.
In this section, first, grip pose exploration experiment was
carried out to understand how contact force varied with respect
to changes in grip pose. Second, based on pose exploration
experiment, a closed-loop force feedback control system, which
enabled the gripper to search for stable grip pose, was con-
structed. Fig. 5 summarizes picking sequence by robot controller
which comprise of robot arm controller, gripper controller, and
closed-loop force feedback system, which is named as GPC.
First, grip pose exploration experiment was conducted with
sensorized soft gripper. The soft fingers of reconfigurable gripper
were incorporated with a taxel of tactile sensor at each fingertip.
Three finger poses were used to grip an irregularly shaped potato
cube whereby left and right fingers were rotated to 0° (Pose 0),
30° (Pose 1), and 45° (Pose 2). The thumb remained in the same
place. During the experiment, the fingers reoriented into each
grip pose (i.e., Pose 0), held the food item for five seconds and
released it. The gripper repeated this procedure for the remaining
two poses. The potato cube was gripped but not lifted from
the table during this process. Embedded force sensor readings
were recorded at 50 Hz and the stability of each grip pose was
analyzed.
Second, based on the findings of pose exploration experiment,
a force feedback system (also known as GPC) that allowed the
gripper to determine suitable grip pose was constructed. In this
system, the gripper attempted to hold the given item for five
seconds using three different poses. GPC ranked the stability of
different poses based on force sensor readings. The following
Section III-D explains how GPC functions. Based on the ranking
by GPC, the most stable grip pose was selected to transport the
food item to designated tray.
Validation experiment for GPC was conducted whereby the
gripper was tasked to pick three types of food samples – broccoli,
potato, and tomato. For each type of food, five samples were
placed in random orientations. During the experiment, GPC was
deployed whereby the gripper automatically reconfigured into
three grip poses (Pose 0, Pose 1, and Pose 2) to hold the given
food samples for five seconds and release it. Based on the ranking
by GPC, the most suitable grip pose was chosen to pick up the
sample. This experiment was repeated two times for each food
sample. A total of 30 trials were conducted for the given food
samples. To further validate the value of GPC, benchmarking
experiment was conducted whereby the gripper was manually
controlled to pick up the same food samples using the same
three grip poses. Manual benchmarking experiment aimed to
determine the picking success rates of different poses for given
food samples and without deployment of GPC. Manual bench-
marking experiment was repeated two times per grip pose for
3236 IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 27, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2022

Fig. 5. Picking sequence of robot controller with GPC. Gray box indicates flowchart of robot controller which consists of robot arm controller,
gripper controller, and GPC. Dotted box indicates vision module can be integrated with force feedback system and robot controller.

TABLE I
FUNCTIONS OF THE SOFTWARE PACKAGES IN THE VISION MODULE

and high accuracy. This algorithm constructed on DarkNet 53

Fig. 6. Flow chart of the vision module.
each food sample. Pick success rates for validation experiment
and benchmarking experiment were then compared.
E. Object Detection and Motion Planning
As mentioned in the prior section, a vision system was de-
veloped to recognize food samples and the pose of each food
item. The flow chart in Fig. 6 elaborates how the vision module
functions. It summarizes the flow of data within the vision
module as well as its relationship with the camera and the robotic
system. The vision module utilizes various software packages
listed in Table I.
In terms of food item recognition and classification, the You
Only Look Once (YOLOv3) based object detection algorithm
[23] was applied in the vision system for its fast detection speed
network includes ConvNets and a SoftMax layer [23]. To build
the object detection function in the system, a trained weight
file is required. Thus, a pretrained weight file from Imagenet
(darnet53.conv.74) [24] was used as a CNN feature extractor on
our dataset. This dataset comprises of 5 categories with 6110
images for training and validation and 346 images for testing.
Each item was annotated with bounding box with the class, range
of orientation, center point, and the size of the box. A training
period of at least 56 h to reach 56000 iterations in the dataset was
required using a single GPU of Quadro RTX 4000 with compute
capability of 7.5. After training the model successfully, the final
weight file was transferred to a detection package with YOLOv3
in ROS. This package will run the detection algorithm and output
a series of bounding boxes of the food samples.
Based on the information from YOLOv3 object detection, the
pose server package, where the key item selection and pose es-
timation were determined simultaneously, provided the picking
targets to the robot. First, the relationship between the camera,
robot, and food samples, as shown in Fig. 7, was calibrated
in advance. After obtaining the bounding boxes of recognized
items, their coordinates in 2-D images were transferred to the
world coordinate system, in which the xy plane is parallel to
the conveyor belt and z-axis lies perpendicularly. Therefore,
the z-value in the world coordinate system was employed to
determine the selection due to the structural characteristics of
pile: the top item in the pile has the lowest risk of damage to other
items. Thus, the highest items of each type were regarded as the
objects of highest interest and were extracted to estimate the 3-D
pose, which significantly simplified the calculation. Moreover,
only two key points within the bounding box were considered
according to the class during the process of pose calculation.

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LOW et al.: SENSORIZED RECONFIGURABLE SOFT ROBOTIC GRIPPER SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATED FOOD HANDLING
Fig. 7. Relationship within camera, robot, food item, and the world
coordinate systems.
In this case, the high speed of vision detection can meet the
real-time requirement of motion planning for Delta robot.
During the picking operation, the robot moved to the pre-
scribed food item location according to the vision detection and
managed the picking sequence. For the placing process, the food
objects were put into a sequence of food containers in a certain
order. The container position information was provided by the
robot’s conveyor tracking system via the analog input signal as-
sociated with the speed of this conveyor belt. This task of picking
different food samples from the input conveyor belt and placing
them to the output container requires the robot moving between
different input trays and output food container repeatedly in an
efficient motion trajectory. Hence, an adaptive pick-and-place
motion strategy was adopted to reduce the duration of the inter-
action between vision and motion. A dual thread was executed
to allow the vision results acquisition and motion trajectory to be
processed independently. They exchanged the messages when
the robot placed the food item in corresponding container in
which robot will not block the camera view. In this way, the
vision detection can share a common period with movement
process to speed up the whole pick-and-place operation.
F. Gripping Tasks
Gripping experiments were conducted for food processing
and packaging, with the gripper attached onto a collaborative
industrial robot arm (UR 5e) (Universal Robots, Odense, Den-
mark). Different gripping poses were adopted based on the shape
and size of the food samples such as tangerine, broccoli, sausage,
long bean, tofu, pudding, and noodle.
The gripper was also mounted on an industrial robotic arm,
ABB FlexPicker (ABB Ltd., Zürich, Switzerland) for high-
speed packing with object detection model. Items such as potato,
omelette, broccoli, and sausage were used for the in-flight meal
packaging. For longitudinally shaped objects such as sausage,
the gripper was configured to pinch pose to enhance the gripping
performance. To demonstrate the advantages of having reconfig-
urability to the gripper, we conduct benchmarking experiments
with commercial soft gripper, customized rigid gripper, and
customized soft gripper. These are the two-fingered grippers.
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3237
The customized rigid gripper and customized soft gripper consist
of an adjustable base (SMC, LEHF20K2-48), which only allows
the finger actuators to be adjusted linearly. The grip success rates
and damage rates of each gripper were evaluated based on 30
food containers with a total of 150 food samples.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. 3D-Printed Finger Actuator
The average bending angle generated by the finger actuator
without and with food-safe sleeve at 300 kPa input air pressure
was 56.15 ± 0.97° and 46.07 ± 1.91°, respectively. The food-
safe sleeve restrained the bending profile of the actuator. With
limited bending, the finger actuator would not over bend under
higher pneumatic pressure. The air pressure would be used to
generate a higher grip force instead of bending the actuator, thus
achieving a better gripping performance. The average bending
force generated by the finger actuator without and with food-safe
sleeve at 300 kPa input air pressure was 2.36 ± 0.1 N and 2.6 ±
0.02 N.
The durability test showed no significant changes in the
curvature profile and force output profile after 25 000 cycles,
showing the actuator is rather durable which can last for at least
25 000 pick-and-place tasks. Since one set of in-flight meal with
5 food samples requires around 15 s to prepare, one gripper
system can pack at least 5000 sets of in-flight meal within a day
without compromising its performance.
B. Flexible Tactile Sensor
When the pressure increased from 0 to 140 kPa, the resistance
of the sensor decreased from 108 Ω to 102 Ω [see Fig. 8(a)]. The
sensor exhibits a large resistance change over a wide pressure
range. There is a hysteresis effect between the loading and
unloading curve, which is due to the hyperelasticity of PDMS
and PEDOT polymers. However, this effect does not affect the
reliability of the sensor during the cyclic loading. When the same
load was repeatably applied, the sensor stably outputted similar
resistance change, showing a reliable sensor performance [see
Fig. 8(b)]. To study the response time of the sensor to pressure, a
small load (equal to 100 Pa) was applied. The sensor responded
to pressure by changing the resistance [see Fig. 8(c)]. There was
a rise time and fall time when pressure was loaded and unloaded.
To eliminate the effect of loading rate, we defined the fall time
as the sensor response time. The sensor can respond to pressure
within 27 ms (see Fig. 8(c), insert).
The result showed that the tactile sensor on the tips can reliably
sense gentle touch of ∼ 100 Pa, while remaining functional even
at high pressures of 140 kPa. It allowed the contact force on both
the fragile items (e.g., pudding) and rigid items (e.g., tangerine)
to be captured for closed-loop feedback control given such a
wide range of sensitivity.
The micropyramid-based tactile sensor proposed in our pre-
vious work [20] was used to sensorize the finger actuator. In
this article, the sensitivity of the sensor was fine-tuned for soft
robotic applications. As sensor exhibits different performances
when interacting with objects with different stiffness, it is crucial
3238
Fig. 8. (a) Resistance changes of the sensor resulting from loading to
140 kPa. (b) Sensor signal during the cyclic loading of 140 kPa for 12 cy-
cles. (c) Response time of the sensor during loading and unloading. (d)
Sensing performance of the tactile sensor with different microstructures.
to tailor the sensor performance. Compared to the similar sensors
[25], [26], the tactile sensor used in this work was customized
for interactions with soft finger actuators. As shown in Fig. 8(d),
a series of micropyramid sensors with different spacings, there-
fore, different densities, were fabricated and characterized. The
size of pyramid is 50 μm and the spacing is 10, 50, and 150 μm
for pattern 1 to pattern 3, respectively. The reduction of mi-
cropyramid density results in higher deformability of sensor
structures, leading to a higher eletromechanical sensitivity to
pressures [27]. However, the sensor may also be easier to get
saturated in this design. The optimized sensor structure, such as
pattern 2 [see Fig. 8(d)], provides desirable sensor performance
for the soft robotic manipulation tasks in this article.
Flexible tactile sensors with high sensitivities, a wide pressure
range and reliable performances are important for sensorized
soft gripper design. They allow robotic gripper to achieve so-
phisticated haptic feedbacks and measurement of contact force.
The customized microstructure design in the proposed sensor
significantly improved the sensitivity at a low-pressure range
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IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 27, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2022
compared to other soft sensor [28], making the sensor able to
sense the change of small pressures. The sensor is also respon-
sive to pressure over a wide range (100 Pa–140 kPa), which is
comparable to human skin [29]. Besides, the microstructure de-
sign relatively reduces the hysteresis effect faced by elastomer-
based pressure sensors [28], improving the sensor reliability
over cycles. Meanwhile, the sensor exhibits a smooth pressure
response, which provides a more stable feedback control.
C. Reconfigurable Soft Robotic Gripper
The gripper successfully manipulated various items using
different grip poses (refer to submitted video). Long size items
such as sausage, a bunch of long bean and oyster mushroom
were gripped with pinch configuration as these items cannot
be manipulated steadily with claw configuration. A floret of
broccoli and tangerine were gripped with claw configuration
and items with diameter smaller than 20 mm such as raspberry
were gripped with claw and inward thumb configuration (thumb
moves inward 20 mm from its home position). This showed the
advantages of having adjustable linear displacement of thumb
to deal with items with various dimensions without changing
the entire finger module. To demonstrate its versatile gripping
capabilities, the gripper was also made to transfer objects using
scoop configuration, which were naturally unstructured and in-
substantial, such as a pile of noodles. However, while a compact
pile of noodles may also be manipulated using the claw pose,
gripping multiple loose items at once is only possible with
the scoop configuration, such as multiple peanuts. Besides, the
gripper was able to manipulate fragile items such as uncooked
tofu and pudding.
Prior to consumption, many of the food samples would be
manually cut and packed before they reach the consumers. As
we attempt to incorporate automated robotic gripping solution
in the midst of this multistaged preparation process, the robotic
gripper would be expected to encounter items of different shapes
and sizes. The challenges faced by the gripper could be further
aggravated by random arrangement of food samples in the tray.
While material compliancy is one of the trademarks of soft
robotic grippers, it is noted that commercially available soft
grippers are made with prefixed finger configurations [8]–[10],
[30]. Hence, even though the gripper offers compliant gripping
mechanism, the empirical gripping solution may limit its versa-
tility and adaptability. Suitable grip pose required of the gripper
would differ based on the physical characteristics of the food
samples that it needs to interact with. For instance, a potato
cube could be stably gripped with claw configuration instead of
the pinching motion. In addition, longitudinally shaped objects
such as sausages are best gripped with pinch instead of the claw
pose. Hence, in this section, we draw on the emphasis of the
need to create versatile compliant gripping solutions.
The benchmarking experiments showed that the proposed
reconfigurable gripper achieved 93.3% gripping success rates,
compared to 10% (conventional soft gripper), 60% (customised
soft gripper), and 70% (customised rigid gripper). In addition,
all the soft grippers do not cause damages to the targeted food
LOW et al.: SENSORIZED RECONFIGURABLE SOFT ROBOTIC GRIPPER SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATED FOOD HANDLING 3239

sample and adjacent food samples, whereas rigid gripper dam-

aged a total of 16 items out of 150 picks. The proposed gripper
generated higher gripping success rates as the grip pose can be
tailored to increase grip stability. For instance, claw pose was
used to handle potato and broccoli and pinch pose was used to
handle sausage.

D. Sensorized Grip Configuration Analysis

First, grip pose exploration experiment was conducted to
examine grip stability between the fingers and object as the
gripper changed into different finger orientations (grip pose).
Grip stability was analyzed using the force sensor readings
recorded by the sensorized fingers. To do so, covariance matrix
of force readings over a period (m) was constructed recursively.
The matrix observes the relative changes in force sensor readings
of three fingers over time. From the matrix, covariance (cov) of
force readings in one finger with respect to the other fingers
[cov(12), cov(13), cov(23)] and variance (var) of force readings
in one finger with respect to itself [var(11), var(22), and var(33)]
are derived. In this notation, 1 refers to center opposing finger,
2 refers to left finger, and 3 refers to right finger. Tracing the
magnitude and direction of relative changes in contact force
allow us to better understand how the object is gripped by the
fingers.
Sensor recordings at time step (tk ) are denoted as
f (tk ) = [f1 (tk ) , f2 (tk ) , . . . fn (tk )] (1)
where n = 3 due to the presence of three fingers and hence,
three taxels in the gripper.
The force readings for a period (m) are stored in m x n matrix Fig. 9. Graphs which depict changes in variance and covariance be-
tween different pairs of sensors, whereby 1 refers to center opposing
F(tk ) as finger, 2 refers to left finger and 3 refers to right finger. (a) Pose 0, (b)
  Pose 1, and (c) Pose 2.
F (tk ) = f (tk ) , f (tk−1 ) , . . . , f (tk−m ) . (2)
Subsequently, covariance matrix for sensor reading at time shaped potato cube, Pose 2 would be the more suitable choice
step (tk ) is formulated as of grip pose.
 
Based on this observation, a computational framework (GPC)
KF F = E (F − μF ) [(F − μF )T where μF = E [F ] . (3)
was developed, which allowed the gripper to automatically
During a stable grip, the force applied by each of the fingers search for stable finger orientation to pick an item. GPC lever-
is assumed to remain steady. Hence, covariance matrix (KFF ) aged on force sensor readings and estimated the instability of
will be a n x n diagonal matrix whereby the diagonals will be grip poses. To do so, as the gripper changed into different poses
either constants or zero. Moving forward, grip initiation phase to pick a sample, GPC continuously calculated instability score
would be referred to the transition phase where the fingers of the (Sk ) at time step (tk ) based on KFF and F(tk ) using the following
grippers begin to flex until it reaches preset pneumatic threshold. equation:
Gripping phase would be referred to the phase whereby the ⎧
⎨ Smax , if KFF = 0, F (tk ) > 0
fingers are maintained at preset pneumatic threshold to hold on
Sk = log (KF F )2 , if KFF > 0, F (tk ) > 0 . (4)
to the potato. ⎩
Smin , if KFF = 0, F (tk ) = 0
As seen in Fig. 9, when Pose 0 or Pose 1 was used, covariance
trends [cov(12), cov(13), cov(23)] displayed asynchronous fluc- In the case that KFF is 0, instability score of Smax (100) or
tuations. This was caused by instability in the location of potato Smin (0) would be accordingly allocated based on F(tk ). If KFF is
during the grip initiation process when it shifted back and forth greater than 0, instability score would be calculated using KFF
between the fingers, resulting in fluctuation of contact forces. based on Log–Euclidean framework. Covariance matrices are
Moreover, during the gripping phase, inconsistent variance, and symmetric and positive definite (SPD), which lie on Riemannian
covariance trends were still observed when Pose 0 or Pose 1 manifold.
was used. However, when Pose 2 was selected, covariance spikes Hence, Euclidean operations could result in negative effects
were much reduced, which indicated that the fingers were able to such as swelling of diffusion tensors and asymmetry after inver-
maintain more stable grip on the potato. Hence, for an irregular sion [31]. With Log–Euclidean framework, application of matrix

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3240 IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 27, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2022

TABLE II
GRIPPING SUCCESS RATE DURING GPC VALIDATION TEST1 AND MANUAL
BENCHMARKING TEST2

logarithm and half-vectorization on SPD matrices allow them to

be mapped to Euclidean space and subsequently, be handled
using Euclidean operations. Based on preliminary tests, it is
expected that instability score of grip pose would decrease with
increased stability of grip pose. After exploration phase, mean
instability score (Smean ) for each pose was calculated (5). Then,
the gripper controller would reconfigure the fingers into pose
which produced the lowest instability score, and subsequently
pick the sample
N
1 
Smean = Sk . (5)
N
k=1 Fig. 10. APs of each class and the mAP value from 0 to 100% on our
small-food dataset. The number following the food name represents the
Results of manual benchmarking test and GPC validation orientation of the food items.
test were compared in Table II. It was noted that GPC ensured
that the food samples could be gripped successfully (100% grip
success rates for three food types) by selecting appropriate grip
poses. For tomatoes, GPC chose Pose 1 for all 10 trials and
for potato, Pose 2 was chosen for all 10 trials. As for broccoli
florets, GPC chose Pose 1 for eight out of 10 trials and Pose 2
for two out of 10 trials. The poses selected by GPC for different
food samples were also grip poses that deliver highest success
rates during manual benchmarking test. It was noted that GPC
did not select poses that performed poorly during the manual
benchmarking test. For instance, it did not select Pose 0 to pick
broccoli florets. Therefore, deployment of GPC would greatly Fig. 11. Results of real-time detection based on YOLOv3 algorithm.
aid in automating the selection process of appropriate grip pose The detected items are labeled with class names and bounding boxes.
to pick up food samples of irregular shapes. Furthermore, it was
noted that during manual benchmarking test and GPC validation
higher resolution layers allows YOLOv3 to produce higher se-
test, food safe sleeves were donned on the soft fingers and it
mantic values and boosts robustness for detecting small objects.
did not affect the performance of the sensor (refer to submitted
In this section, we set up our own small-food dataset with
video).
an additional annotation of range of orientation to be applied
with YOLOv3 algorithm and the proposed 3-D pose estimation
E. Object Detection and Motion Planning
strategy on food detection and positioning tasks. Based on this,
To ensure the object detector works alongside a high-speed the accuracy of object classification and the speed of pose
delta robot, the detection method employed in the gripping task estimation perform 67.06% mean average precision (mAP) and
is YOLOv3, which has been proven to be significantly faster 92.7 ms for each inference circle ranging from classification
than other detection algorithms such as Faster-RCNN, FPN, and to pose calculation, respectively. Fig. 10 illustrates the average
SSD with similar performance [32]. YOLOv3 achieves higher precision (AP) of each class sorting in a descending order, which
accuracy under both PASCAL VOC and COCO datasets than can be used to improve the mAP through reprocessing the classes
most of state-of-the-art models except RetinaNet [23]. However, with low AP score. The real-time detection of small food samples
RetinaNet is more time-consuming in processing. Therefore, using our system is shown in Fig. 11. The food samples in the
YOLOv3 was selected based on the tradeoff between accuracy top layer have all been detected and classified according to food
and efficiency. Most importantly, the network structure with type. Additionally, the food selection and their orientations are

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LOW et al.: SENSORIZED RECONFIGURABLE SOFT ROBOTIC GRIPPER SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATED FOOD HANDLING
produced along with the detection. As such, our proposed system
can be applied for real-time automated food handling.
IV. CONCLUSION
This article presents a sensorized reconfigurable soft robotic
gripper system, which can be readily implemented as a grip-
ping solution to industries requiring food assembly automation.
Finger modules of the gripper can be adjusted with ease to
adapt to a wider range of objects. In comparison to commercial
soft grippers, this novel aspect allows our proposed gripper to
handle different types of food samples at higher grip success
rate. However, although reconfigurability improves gripping
function, it also increases operation complexity because the
choices of grip pose for every picking task increases. This
concern is addressed by developing a real time computational
framework, which leverages on flexible tactile sensors that are
integrated on soft fingers. The framework—GPC—is essentially
a closed loop force feedback system, which allows the gripper
to automatically explore different grip poses on a given item
and determine the most stable pose to be used for picking tasks.
Repeatability and consistency of grip pose selection by GPC
was validated with irregularly cut food samples. This article also
presented incorporation of a vision system to efficiently identify
the category of the object and 6-D target object pose in piles
of similar food samples, and thereafter, determine an optimized
path to achieve the best gripping performance. By integrating
visual based object detection and tactile sensory feedback to
automatically determine optimal grip pose for different food
samples, the autonomy of food handling process by the versatile
soft robotic gripper can be improved.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank E. Toh, G. Zhu, and C. Y.
Wong, of the NTU’s Robotics Research Centre, and Marisa Lim
from Department of Biomedical Engineering for their engineer-
ing assistance in this article.
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3242
Jin Huat Low received the M. Eng. degree in
mechanical engineering from the National Uni-
versity of Singapore (NUS), Singapore, in 2016.
He is currently a Research Associate with the
Evolution Innovation Laboratory, NUS. He has
authored more than 30 publications in scientific
journals and conferences. His main research in-
terests include soft robotics, human biomechan-
ics, robotic gripping, sensors, and 3-D printing.
Mr. Low was the recipient of the Technology
Innovation Award from the IES Prestigious Engi-
neering Awards 2017-2018 and Bronze Award from the EMedIC Global
2018.
Phone May Khin received the B.Eng. de-
gree in biomedical engineering in 2014 from
the National University of Singapore (NUS),
Singapore, where she is currently working
toward the Ph.D. degree in the mechanical
engineering.
Her research interests include develop-
ment of sensor integrated AI and robotics
applications.
Qian Qian Han is currently working toward
the bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering
with the National University of Singapore (NUS),
Singapore, in 2022.
Her research interests include soft robotics
and robotics in rehabilitation.
Ms. Han was the recipient of the Bronze
Award from the EMedIC Global 2019 and NUS
FoE Innovation and Research Award 2020 –
Merit Award.
Haicheng Yao received the bachelor’s degree
in materials science and engineering from the
University of Electronic Science and Technology
of China, Chengdu, China, in 2017. He is cur-
rently working toward the Ph.D. degree in mate-
rials science and engineering with the National
University of Singapore, Singapore.
His current research focuses on electronic
skin (e-skin) tactile sensors.
Yee Seng Teoh received the B.Eng. degrees in
mechanical engineering from Nanyang Techno-
logical University (NTU), Singapore, 2016.
He is currently a Research Engineer with the
Robotic Research Centre, Department of Me-
chanical and Aerospace Engineering, NTU. His
main research interests include industrial au-
tomation and human-robot interaction, involving
machine learning, computer vision, robotic ma-
nipulation, and software design.
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IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 27, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2022
Yadan Zeng received the M.S. degree in phys-
ical electronics from the University of Science
and Technology of China, Chengdu, China, in
2015.
She is currently a Research Associate with
the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering, Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore. Her research interests include com-
puter vision, mobile robots, and 3-D map recon-
struction.
Si Li received the master’s degree in electronics
from Nanyang Technological University, in 2017.
He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree
with the National University of Singapore, Sin-
gapore.
His current research focuses on magnetic
devices.
Jun Liu received the Ph.D. degree in me-
chanical engineering from National University of
Singapore (NUS), Singapore, in 2013.
He is currently a Research Scientist with
the Institute of High Performance Computing,
A∗STAR, Singapore. His main research inter-
ests include multiscale/multiphysics modeling
of smart material and hybrid system, nonlin-
ear constitutive modeling and finite element im-
plementation, numerical modeling, and process
optimization in advanced manufacturing.
Zhuangjian Liu received the Ph.D. degree
in engineering from the National University of
Singapore (NUS), Singapore, in 2009.
He is currently a Senior Scientist with
the Institute of High Performance Computing,
A∗STAR Research Entities. His main research
interests include solid mechanics, numerical
simulation, wearable, and flexible electronics
soft robotics and sensors.
Dr. Liu was the recipient of the 2018 and 2019
Highly Cited Researchers list from Clarivate
Analytics.
Pablo Valdivia y Alvarado (Member, IEEE) re-
ceived the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in me-
chanical engineering from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA,
in 1999, 2001, and 2007.
He is currently an Assistant Professor in the
Engineering and Product Development Pillar
with the Singapore University of Technology and
Design, Singapore. His research interests in-
clude soft robotics, advanced additive manufac-
turing, and bioinspired design.
Dr. Valdivia y Alvarado was the recipient of MIT’s Technology Review
2012 TR35 Young Innovator Award for South East Asia, Australia, and
New Zealand.
LOW et al.: SENSORIZED RECONFIGURABLE SOFT ROBOTIC GRIPPER SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATED FOOD HANDLING 3243

I-Ming Chen (Fellow, IEEE) received the B.S.
degree from National Taiwan University, Taipei,
Taiwan, in 1986, and the M.S. and Ph.D. de-
grees from the California Institute of Technology,
Pasadena, CA, USA, in 1989 and 1994, respec-
tively, all in mechanical engineering.
He has been with the School of Mechanical
and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Techno-
logical University (NTU), Singapore, since 1995.
He was the Director of Robotics Research Cen-
tre (2013 to 2017), and the Director of Intelli-
gent Systems (2006 to 2015) in NTU. His research interests include
construction and logistics robots, human-robot interaction, and industrial
automation.
Prof. Chen was General Chairman of 2017 IEEE International Confer-
ence on Robotics and Automation in Singapore, Fellow of ASME, and
Fellow of Academy of Engineering, Singapore. He is Editor-in-chief of
IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS from 2020–2022.
Raye Chen Hua Yeow received the Ph.D. de-
gree in bioengineering from the National Univer-
sity of Singapore, Singapore, in 2010.
His Postdoctoral training with the BioRobotics
Laboratory, Harvard University from 2010–
2012. He is an Associate Professor and Deputy
Head (Outreach and Industry) with the Depart-
ment of Biomedical Engineering, National Uni-
versity of Singapore, and a Principal Investigator
with the Advanced Robotics Centre.
Dr. Raye was the recipient of the MIT Tech-
nology Review Innovators Under 35 Asia in 2016, and the Applied Re-
search Award, Young Creator Award, and Technology Innovation Award
from the IES Prestigious Engineering Awards 2017-2018.

Benjamin Chee Keong Tee received the Ph.D.

from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
He is appointed President’s Assistant Profes-
sor with the Department of Materials Science
and Engineering, National University of Singa-
pore. He leads his research group: Sensors.AI
to develop technologies at the cutting edge of
materials science, electronics, and biology.
Dr. Tee was the recipient of the National
Research Foundation Fellowship. He was a
Singapore-Stanford Biodesign Global Innova-
tion Postdoctoral Fellow in 2014. He has developed and patented sev-
eral award-winning electronic skin sensor technologies. He is an MIT
TR35 Innovator (Global) in 2015 and listed as World Economic Forum’s
Young Scientist of the year in 2019.

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