SoftGrip passed the 6th-month-mark of its research trajectory, and the whole consortium came together on the 13th-14th of July for a plenary meeting. The purpose of the online gathering was to track down the research and technological progress on the various technologies, discuss preliminary work, discover possible issues and address fitting solutions for them.
As is customary, each project partner is responsible for a specific technological and research area. MITSUI chemicals discussed developing and integrating materials suitable for proprioception and tactile sensing into the soft gripper structure. TEAGASC focused on the complied technical/functional requirements analysis that led to productive interactions on the nature of mushrooms and their distinct harvesting needs. ICCS (Institute of Communication & Computer Systems) addressed robotic challenges related to multi-fingered grasping and dexterous manipulation with a view to developing the optimal grasping control strategies. The presentation also elaborated on the creation of a vision system for mushroom segmentation & pose estimation, as well as the modelling of the soft gripping device.
Moreover, SSSA (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna) took the floor in order to present the topic of soft gripper architecture and the design of pneumatically actuated fingers. In turn, TWI Hellas provided information regarding the future work on the system integration in the Dutch shelves cultivation environment and the software integration and the grippers’ performance evaluation. The University of Essex concentrated on the upcoming development of the robotic skill acquisition algorithms, the data collection and overall framework. During the meeting, project partners also reviewed the dissemination activities thus far and set their sights on further promoting SoftGrip.
In a nutshell, the plenary meeting was a great opportunity for the participants from all the different consortium partners to exchange views on the project’s present state and future developments and converse on everyday topics that concern the team. Finally, the gathering gave the participants a chance to socialise even under the Covid-19 online conditions.
