On the 28th and 29th of January 2021, the SoftGrip consortium came together for the kick-off meeting, officially launching the SoftGrip Project! The project is carried out by a transnational and interdisciplinary consortium of six partners from five EU countries under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 grant funding. SoftGrip’s ultimate purpose is to develop a low-cost, soft robotic gripper that will improve production efficiency, reduce expenditure, and increase yields.
During the 2-day meeting, SSSA, the project coordinator, introduced the relevant goals, roles and scheduled workplan. MITSUI discussed the design and development of the embedded functionalisation in SoftGrip. In turn, TEAGASC analysed the technical/functional requirements, the experiments to be conducted, and the challenges to be resolved. On their part, ICCS-NTUA talked about the soft gripper’s vision system responsible for mushroom detection and pose estimation. Next, SSSA drew attention to the soft gripper’s design and development process, while UESS addressed the acquisition of robotic skills through algorithmic development. Finally, THL brought the hardware and software integration to the forefront and the subsequent evaluation of the SoftGrip performance.
In a nutshell, the SoftGrip kick-off meeting set a well-organised infrastructure to develop innovative technologies that will produce a new generation of soft grippers that can alter the agricultural industry for the better.
