Robot uses measuring tape-like fingers to grip and pick fruit
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new style of robotic fruit picker taking inspiration from measuring tapes.
The research team published its process and design for the Grip-tape robot in the journal Science Advances on 9 April 2025, grip standing for Grasping and Rolling In-Plane.
The design came from efforts to develop robotic manipulators with large reach and small storage volume.
“We like to look for non-traditional, non-intuitive robot mechanisms. The tape measure is such a wonderful structure because of its combined softness and stiffness together,” said Nick Gravish, the paper’s senior author and a faculty member in the UC San Diego Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, told university media.
The robot’s qualities make it an ideal option for robotic fruit picking as the bidirectional tape spring “fingers” enable a multitude of manipulation capabilities such as translation, rotation, twisting, and multi-object conveyance.
“The different actuation modes of the Grip-tape could be particularly useful in picking applications, for example, reaching out and grabbing a fruit, twisting it off the plant, then retracting and conveying the fruit back to a central body for inspection,” the research article said.
“While these functions can also be achieved by some previous studies on active surfaces, Grip-tape offers advantages in soft gripping and reachability. The compliant and spring-like nature of the end joint would allow for force control while harvesting produce and would lower the chance of damaging a fruit while harvesting it.”
Researchers have showing that the Grip-tape is already capable of grabbing objects of varied shapes and stiffnesses such as individual lemons, oranges, tomatoes and an entire tomato vines.
According to university media, next versions of the gripper could improve on the original by adding advanced sensors and AI-driven data analysis so that the gripper can operate autonomously.
