A FUZZY CONTROLLED PNEUMATIC GRIPPER FOR ASPARAGUS HARVESTING

The paper presents a grasping unit for asparagus harvesting based on a commercially available pneumatic gripper. Highly reliable low-cost ta ctile sensors were developed to determine contact pressure during gras ping. Experimental tests were conducted on all system components in or der to achieve a thorough knowledge of the physical phenomena which de termine system behaviour. A fuzzy control system was developed on the basis of this experimental data The paper then presents and discusses experimental data for grasping tests with different sizes of asparagus and different reference contact pressures to demonstrate the versatil ity and robustness of me system.