Robotic Food Handling Utilizing Temperature Dependent Variable-Stiffness Material

This paper presents a robotic end-effector that addresses challenges of automated robotic food handling.We utilize a variable stiffness fabric on the finger surfaces of the gripper.Depending on its temperature, the finger stiffness changes to tackle grasping food items with different physical characteristics.Hard objects can be grasped with the hard mode of the finger while a fragile object can be safely grasped with the soft mode.This gripper design was validated empirically through force and object-grasping experiments.