A low-cost gripper for an apple picking robot

Abstract

A special gripper has been designed to pick apples from trees in an apple orchard. It is a low cost gripper with highly capability to pick an apple without scratching its skin. The gripper has been designed in accordance to the apple orchard environment and robot specification. Furthermore, the experiments show that the gripper can complete all tasks properly. The gripper was mounted on a manipulator and tested in an indoor laboratory environment. Experimental results show that the gripper could successfully pick apples.