Journal of Food Engineering 98 (2010) 332338

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Food Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jfoodeng

Design of a magnetorheological robot gripper for handling of delicate food

products with varying shapes
A. Pettersson a,*, S. Davis b, J.O. Gray b, T.J. Dodd c, T. Ohlsson a
a

SIK The Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology, P.O. Box 5401, SE-402 29 Gothenburg, Sweden
Italian Institute of Technology (Fondazione Instituto Italiano di Tecnologia), Via Morego, 30-16163 Genoa, Italy
c
Department of Automatic Control & Systems Engineering, University of Shefeld, Shefeld S1 3JD, UK
b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 25 August 2009
Received in revised form 4 November 2009
Accepted 5 November 2009
Available online 18 January 2010
Keywords:
Gripper
Robot
Food
Fruit
Flexible
MR uid
Magneto-rheological uid
Delicate

a b s t r a c t
Natural food products are often variable in shape and easily bruised, making them difcult to handle for a
robot. In this paper, a novel robot gripper that utilizes the effects of a magnetorheological (MR) uid is
described and evaluated. In the gripping process pouches lled with MR uid are molded around the
products contours. Through the activation of an electromagnet in the gripper arm, a large increase in
the MR uids yield stress connes the product in the mould produced by the gripper surfaces, allowing
it to be lifted. Mounted on a six axis KUKA robot products such as apples, carrots, strawberries, broccolis
and grapes have been handled without bruising or denting and without the tool changes that would typically be needed. The paper presents data regarding the forces exerted on products during gripping as
well as data on maximum payloads and graspable product shapes.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Many manufacturing industries today use robots for a wide
range of tasks. The driving forces for such automation are increased
efciency, consistency of quality, increased hygiene and reduced
labour costs (Gray, 2001). However, food manufacturers have been
slow to fully utilize the benets of robot automation. Most robots
in the food industry today are used for handling products packed in
primary or secondary packing and palletizing, few are used to handle unpacked products in the process (Wallin, 1997). Some reasons
for this are that food products are very diverse and display a wide
range in size, texture, weight, susceptibility to damage, colour and
shape, making them difcult or impossible to grip with traditional
on/off or vacuum grippers. New grippers are costly to develop and
it is a signicant challenge to develop a single gripper that can handle multiple food types. The cost and time implications of using
multiple grippers for different food types mean this is not a viable
option in the food industry. Still, as Chua et al. (2003) concludes in
their review of robotic manipulation of food products, many food
companies see the use of robots and automation as vital for their
future survival.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +46 10 516 66 42; fax: +46 46 18 87 65.

E-mail addresses: apn@sik.se, anders.pettersson@sik.se (A. Pettersson).
0260-8774/$ - see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2009.11.020

It is very difcult for a robot gripper to compete with human

workers in terms of exibility. A human worker can easily handle
the most delicate products, quickly change from one product to another and to pick objects laying on top of each other presents no
problem. These are difcult tasks for a robot (Chua et al., 2003).
The robot does, however, have other advantages in food production. Hygiene is especially critical when handling unpacked food
products. Today more and more ready-to-eat meals are consumed.
Some of these are not cooked but only heated by the consumer,
increasing the risk for contaminants in the product to survive
(Erzincanli and Sharp, 1997a). Human contact with food products
is a contamination risk. Humans carry microorganisms, hair, saliva
and potentially dirt which can contaminate the food whilst robots
can be built to be very clean (Brumson, 2008). Other useful features
of robots are that they are not affected by chilled or heated environments and they are not damaged by repetitive motions, or
modied atmospheres. Furthermore are they able to work 24 h a
day with constant quality, speed and efciency. To utilize all those
benets new grippers are needed. Patri (1991) presented an early
concept of a programmable kitchen system based on a Puma 760
robot. A robot dished up plates of food according to received recipes. This work was however mostly theoretical but one conclusion
was that the dispensation and presentation (gripping/handling) of
material was a major problem with no apparent simple solution.
Today, however, robots are slowly entering into food production.

A. Pettersson et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 98 (2010) 332338

Dahlquist (2007) describes a mufn production line in a bakery.

The production line is completely automated and human contact
is completely avoided at all steps. Frozen hamburgers are also handled with robots and vacuum-cup pickup. FlexPicker robots are
used to handle up to 150 burgers a minute and placing them into
cartons (Rice, 2008). Many similar applications like these can be
found e.g. picking croissants, confectionary, sausages, pancakes
and slices of meat. However, most applications use grippers that
can only handle minor variations in product shape and texture.
The inexibility of grippers available today is limiting the use of
robots in the food industry. Much research has therefore been done
to develop new and more universal grippers for food products.
Erzincanli and Sharp (1997b) classication system for food products suggested six main categories: shape, dimension, surface,
compliance, temperature and weight. For each of these, 10 or more
grades are used. It can easily be seen that it is difcult to develop a
universal gripper for such a wide range of product characteristics.
Furthermore, food product behaviour is not static but is affected by
e.g. temperature and pressure; they may be fragile, can be easily
bruised and are susceptible to bacterial contamination (Chua
et al., 2003).
However, some projects have presented interesting approaches
to this problem and often with good results. Lien and Gjerstad
(2008) have developed a gripper that uses a Peltier element to
freeze products to the gripper surface. The gripper was shown to
manage gripping forces and release times, for cod sh meat, within
requirements for industrial use. The materials used and principle of
operation makes a hygienic design possible. A number of non-contact grippers utilizing the Bernoulli effect have been presented.
One example is a gripper presented by Davis et al. (2008) for handling tomato slices. A positive airow is used to create a pressure
decrease in the gap between the gripper surface and the product.
The gripper design can be made very simple, and together with
the non-contact feature the gripper is potentially very suitable
for the food industry. As shown by Naghdy and Esmaili (1996) it
is even possible to extract information about fruits ripeness in
the gripping process. They used a soft force sensor on a parallel
jaw gripper to measure rmness and correlate this to fruit maturity. Choi and Koc (2006) present a gripper with inatable rubber
pockets on the gripper surfaces. This gripper was able to handle
various three dimensional shapes and still retain a low picking
and placing positioning error. The gripper could be set to use low
forces. Already in 1977 had Hirose and Umetani developed a soft
gripping universal gripper. The design was made up of a linked
wire and pulley system. When wrapping itself around objects each
link exerts the same force on the product, making it a very suitable
gripper for delicate and variable products (Hirose and Umetani,
1977). In 1980 Perovskii presented an interesting gripper using
the hardening effect that occurs if a vacuum is applied to small particles enclosed in a rubber pouch. At normal pressure these particles can move around freely and be formed around an object.
When a vacuum is applied the shape is locked and the product is
conned in the form created between the pouches (Perovskii,
1980). Imitations of the human hand could be ideally suited for
handling delicate products and have been researched for a long
time but have not come onto the market due to demands and limitations of such hands (Caldwell and Tsagarakis, 2000).
Even if much research has been done there is still a lack of suitable grippers. Partly due to this most robots in the food industry
are used as only slightly more exible then hard automation. Hard
automation can often be seen as a production unit with a very high
throughput but with low exibility. For these robot stations the cycle times are expected to be as high as for hard automation and little extra are expected, preferably a robot should be tted at an
existing production line. A signicant aim of this work is to develop
a gripper that is as exible as possible. The concept was to create a

333

Fig. 1. Visualization of the concept of a exible robot station for food production. A
mixed and disordered inow of products is identied by a vision system. The
coloured eld on the conveyers left side indicates the vision system exposure area.

one-robot robot station with a universal gripper able to assemble

whole, or part of, meal trays e.g. ready-to-eat meals, Sushi lunch
boxes or fruit boxes. Not only to put one type of product in a
box. Focus was therefore put on the development of a universal
gripper. Fig. 1 shows a visualization of the concept with a robot
handling a mixture of products arriving on a conveyor where a
exible robot gripper is able to handle the product variability
and produce an ordered output.
In this paper, we present a novel universal robotic gripper to increase the functionality of robots in the food industry. The gripper
utilizes the increase in yield stress of a magnetorheological (MR)
uid achieved when a magnetic eld is applied. With this technique various product shapes and sizes can be gripped using very
little force. During the research the products used for testing have
been, models of or fresh, whole fruits and vegetables, specically
carrots, strawberries, apples, tomatoes, grapes and broccolis to
cover a wide span of product properties. Integrated in a robot station, creating a exible production unit, and using product data extracted with a vision system this gripper is demonstrated to handle
a wide variety of products without time consuming readjustments
between products and without bruising or denting.
2. Gripper design and experimental setup
The experimental description of this paper consists of three
parts. Firstly the design of the novel MR Fluid gripper is explained
in more detail and secondly the robot station in which it is intended to operate is described. In Section 2.3, the methods to assess the gripper are described.
2.1. Designing a magnetorheological (MR) uid gripper
To overcome the hard contact found with traditional jaw grippers, and thus reduce the risk of bruising and denting, a compliant/deformable covering for the jaws was investigated. A
compliant surface also facilitates handling of various shapes. It
was found that MR uids have the unique features of both an
excellent compliance and the ability to secure a solid grip.
A magnetorheological uid is a material where the rheological
properties change when a magnetic eld is applied. MR uids are
suspensions of micron-sized polarisable particles. The particles
are universally iron and the carrier uid used can be e.g. oil or

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A. Pettersson et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 98 (2010) 332338

water, at ambient conditions MR uids show a Newtonian ow

behaviour, but in a magnetic eld the uid exhibits a yield
strength. A higher magnetic eld universally generates higher yield
strength up to a saturation level. To generate a magnetic eld, permanent magnets or electromagnets can be used. The advantage
with the electromagnet is that the magnetic eld can be activated
and deactivated instantaneously and controlled from a microcontroller. MR uids have been used both in research and in commercial applications. Rong et al. (2000) presented a exible xture
solution to reduce the number of xtures needed in production.
The concept was to use MR uid under high pressure to generate
satisfying xture strength. MR uids have also been used for
semi-active seat suspension system dynamic dampers (Jolly
et al., 1998), and for clutches.
To contain the MR uid oil resistant polyurethane pouches were
used. The pouches are only partially lled to allow for free ow of
the uid at forming, 22 cm3 was used for each pouch. A pouch of
MR uid was bonded to the surface of each of the two electromagnets. The high density of the MR uid tends to give the pouches a
natural drop shape protruding approximately 10 mm from the
magnet surface. These electromagnets were mounted, with the
MR pouches facing each other, on the arms of a parallel jaw actuator. The actuator design uses a stepper motor with a linear bearing and a ball screw. This setup allows for a step resolution of
0.031 mm/step and a maximum grip separation of 79 mm. The
maximum product width that this gripper can handle is 69 mm,
in its current conguration. In Fig. 2 the gripper is shown in detail.
The magnets used are 50 mm in diameter with a thickness of
27 mm and are powered with 24 V DC. In this project a MRF140CG MR uid (LORD Corporation, Cary, NC, USA) has been used.
Up to a magnetic eld strength of approximately 100 kA/m, the
yield stress of this MR uid increases almost linearly from 3 to
44 kPa and then attens out to around 60 kPa at 200 kA/m, see
Table 1 for further properties (Lord Corporation, 2008). For the
magnetic eld strength used in this study the MR uids relative
permeability, l/l0, have been calculated as approximately 12. A

problem with MR uids is the tendency for the heavy particles to

settle and thus change the uids properties. The MRF-140CG MR
uid has been designed to prevent hard settling and to be easily
redispersed (Lord Corporation, 2008). In this study this problem
has not been investigated as the pouches will be continuously
kneaded by the gripping action and the uid therefore will be continuously redispersed. Via a microcontroller, the gripper arm separation, speed, acceleration, deceleration, closing force and magnets
can be controlled.
As a gripping cycle is started the gripper arms closes in on the
object to be grasped. When the MR uid lled pouches reach the
sides of the product the pouches will start to deform, without
stretching the pouch material, and shape to the products contours
as the low viscous MR uid ows out of the way. The gripper arms
will be stopped at a predened position, leaving a gap, see Fig. 3,
between the magnet surface and the product of 07.5 mm on each
side. This gripper arm separation is set individually for each product using the width or diameter parameters extracted by the vision
system. Activating the electromagnets induces yield strength in the
MR uid and the product is now conned in the mould created. At
this stage the product can be lifted, handled with a low force
spread over a large surface.
One of the gripper arms has been equipped with a strain gauge
force sensor. This sensor allows for multiple gripping modes. In
normal gripping mode the arms are closed to a desired separation
depending on sample size and desired gap. This gripping uses very
low force but some products might require even more delicate
handling. A force limit can be used. Using the force sensor the

Fig. 2. The MR uid gripper gripping a model strawberry. The right most gripper
arm is stationary and equipped with a strain gauge force sensor. On the left the
stepper motor and belt drive transmission is seen and in the middle the ball screw
and linear ball bearing.

Fig. 3. Schematic description of the experimental setup. (a) Electromagnet, (b)

actuator unit, (c) MR uid lled pouch, (d) grip gap, (e) forming depth (FD) and (f)
force lifting the INSTRON cross-bar.

Table 1
Typical properties for the MRF-140CG magneto-rheological uid (Lord Corporation,
2008).
Viscosity, Pa s (at 40 C)
Density g/cm3
Solid content by weight, %
Operation temperature, C

0.280 0.070
3.543.74
85.44
40 to +130

A. Pettersson et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 98 (2010) 332338

closing of the gripper arms can be regulated by a preset force limit

and will move to the set position without passing this limit (force
mode gripping). A rule based decision is made for each product
identied by the vision system and the maximum force limit is
sent to the gripper. Since the force during gripping will depend
on the viscosity and density of the MR uid this will lead to longer
gripping times, to allow for the MR uid to ow out of the way.
2.2. Robot station conguration
For the pick and place tests a KUKA KR5 sixx 6-axis robot (Augsburg, Germany) has been used. The robot has a reach of 850 mm
and is specied to a payload of 5 kg. Vision data are acquired using
an overhead mounted Cognex In-Sight 5400 camera (Natick, MA,
USA), IP67 with PatMax software. Products are identied by the
camera using a sorting algorithm to nd products of different sizes
and elongation. Using this setup a mixture of apples, smaller carrots, larger carrots, broccolis, tomatoes, strawberries and grapes
can be identied and sorted from one picture. Data such as product
position coordinates, angle, width, diameter and length is extracted and sent to the robot.
For each product targeted the robot positions the gripper over
the product and requests a grip appropriate for the type of product
to be gripped. In this grip request, gripper separation and/or maximal force to be used is specied individually for each product. The
maximum force and the separation are based on the identied
product type and width. For example, strawberries are gripped
using only a small forming due to their relative frailness whilst apples can use a larger forming depth (FD), i.e. a smaller gap, see
Fig. 3, to achieve higher lift strength. The request is sent to the gripper via a control PC using RS232 serial communication. In the grippers microcontroller the request is executed and the gripper closes
to the specied force or distance, sending a signal back to the robot
when the product is secured in the grip. The products are placed
according to gripping information and to a preferred layout.
2.3. Methods
To gain knowledge of what products are likely to be able to be
handled the maximal lift force was measured. For this test a set of
model products fabricated out of wood were used for convenience.
The models were made to resemble the shapes of an apple (D
69 mm), a tomato (D 55 mm), two strawberries (D 36 mm, L
36 mm and D 26 mm, L 30 mm) and a carrot (L 130 mm D1, thick
end, 26 mm D2, 17 mm, thin end). Since the variations in sizes and
shapes for natural products are high, these measurements can only
be used as guidelines. For most food products, and other non-magnetic materials, the permeability is very close to that of water or
air. The permeability differences between model products of wood
and real products will therefore have minimal impact on the grip
force measured.
To measure the grippers lift force for various shapes and gap
settings the gripper was connected to a 100 N load cell mounted
on the cross-bar of an INSTRON 4301 material testing device (Norwood, MA, USA), a schematic description of the experimental setup
is shown in Fig. 3. The cross-bar can move vertically up or down
and the force moving the cross-bar is regulated to increase with
a constant rate of 30 N/min during testing. As the gripper is
mounted under the cross-bar it can grip objects placed on the surface below it. The load cell measures the vertical forces exerted on
the gripper connected to it. The object is fastened to the surface below the gripper, gripped by the gripper and then the lifting force is
increased acting on the cross-bar. A forcedisplacement diagram is
then recorded. At the start of the test, as the product is rmly held
by the gripper (and secured to the surface under it), the force forcing the gripper up will increase sharply without the gripper mov-

335

ing upwards. When the force that is lifting the cross-bar

continues to increase, the gripper will slowly start to move upwards with the cross-bar as the product slips in its grip. When
the product had moved 2 mm in the grip (the gripper had moved
2 mm upwards), the test was terminated. The force needed to displace the product 1 mm, within the grip, was recorded as the grippers maximal lift force. A product displacement of 1 mm in the grip
during handling was considered acceptable with the motivation
from Wallin (1997) where a positioning accuracy of a few millimetres is considered sufcient for most food handling applications.
Various gap settings have been tested with the model products.
A gap of 0 mm would indicate that the surfaces of both magnets
are in contact with the sides of the product and the MR uid lled
pouches completely compressed. At a gap setting of 10 mm there is
a MR uid lled spacing between the product and the magnet surface of 5 mm on each side.
The test is considered to give a good estimate of the loads the
gripper is able to handle as it is similar to the action of a robot station where the object is gripped and lifted.
A 2D simulation of the magnets magnetic eld strength has
been performed using Visimag software (Visimag, http://www.vizimag.com). The physical dimensions of the magnets were used in
the model and the relative permeability, l/l0, was set to 500 (mild
steel or free cutting steel). The MR uid was modelled as a 7 mm
homogenous block on the surface of the magnet. From the product
data sheet of the MR uid the relative permeability, l/l0, was calculated as 12 for the eld strength used. With the data collected
from the simulation the yield stress of the MR uid can be estimated and a theoretical lift force has been calculated.
Using the force sensor in the gripper arm the forces exerted on
the product during gripping were measured. Gripping force was
measured on a model strawberry for a range of closing speeds.
Information of force and gripping time were recorded.
For the pick and place evaluation the gripper was implemented
as a part of the robot station. A mixture of products was spread out
on a table positioned under the vision camera and the robot station
was started. When the robot had picked all identied products
available, a new load of products were spread out on the table
and a signal was sent to the camera using a manual switch, initiating a new image capture and the following automated picking and
placing. The grippers ability to handle the different products using
the vision data was observed and the products were afterwards
visually inspected to detect denting or bruising.

3. Results
3.1. Grip strength
The results from the grip strength test are shown in Fig. 4. Values are presented both with and without the magnets activated as
a comparison. It can be seen that a decrease in gap leads to an increase in grip strength.
Partially this is an effect of the increased amount of MR uid
trapped under the products curvature when the gap is smaller. It
is the MR uid trapped under the product that supports the weight
of the product when the magnets are activated. However, the main
reason for the increase in grip strength is considered to be an effect
of the increase in magnetic eld strength closer to the magnet surface. The increase in eld strength results in an increase in the MR
uids yield strength and the higher yield strength can in turn support higher loads. For the object to move in the grip the MR uid
under it must ow to the sides which require a higher force as
the yield strength increases. It can also be seen that larger products
generate higher grip strength. Again this is an effect of the amount
of uid trapped under the object gripped.

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A. Pettersson et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 98 (2010) 332338

Gap 3 mm
Gap 5 mm
Gap 10 mm
Gap 15 mm

Grip strength (N)

10
8
6
4
2

at
o
C
ar
ro
t(
La
M
)
rg
e
C
St
a
rro
ra
w
t
be
La
r
ry
rg
e
(M
Sm
St
)
ra
al
lS
w
be
tra
rry
w
Sm ber
ry
al
(M
lS
)
tra
w
be
rry

(M
)

To
m

at
o

To
m

Ap
pl
e

(M

)
Ap
pl
e

Fig. 4. The gure shows the grip strength measured for a set of model product with
(M) and without the magnets activated. 3, 5, 10 and 15 mm gap settings have been
tested for all products except apple where only 5, 10 and 15 mm have been used.
The error bars indicates the standard deviation.

If the magnets are activated the achievable grip strength increases between 24% and 110% as compared to gripping without
activating the magnets. The reason to why the grip strength is as
high as it is, when not using the magnets, is considered to be due
to the rather high friction between the product and the MR lled
pouches. This friction causes the product to be quite well gripped
and hanging in the rubber pouch surface. However, the mobility
is much higher sideways for the product when not activating the
magnets. The largest improvement in grip strength can be seen
when using the smallest gap. This is likely due to the higher magnetic eld strength at small gaps. It is suggested that the gripping
would be improved by using less amount of MR uid and aim to
use as small gaps as possible. This would decrease the force exerted on the object at gripping even further and increase gripping
strength as the gap gets smaller. In Table 2 it can clearly be seen
that the grip strength is enough for all products tested.
It is important to consider the high accelerations of robots when
dimensioning a gripper. Some of the fastest robots today can use
1015 G of acceleration, requiring a secure grip on the product.
The maximal allowable acceleration can be calculated using Eq.
(1) and the maximal lift strength from Fig. 4:

F ma

For a tomato with an average weight of 80 g and a grip gap of

3 mm the maximal acceleration expressed in G is 11 G when activating the magnets and 5 G without activating the magnets. It is
clear that the MR uid in combination with the magnetic eld enables higher handling speeds.
3.2. Magnetic eld simulation
The magnetic eld strength was simulated at four distances
from the magnet surface: 1.5, 2.75, 5 and 7 mm. In Fig. 5 it can

Table 2
MR gripper grip strength compared with real product masses. For apple data a 5 mm
gap has been used and for the others a 3 mm gap.
Product

Typical product
mass (g)

MR gripper lift capacity

(Experimental data) (g)

Apple
Tomato
Carrot
Strawberry

150
80
75100
512

950
900
660
440

be seen that the eld strength is strongest close to the magnet surface and weakest closest to the pole. At transitions from the pole to
the coil, eld strength peaks can be seen but these are most pronounced at small distances from the surface. These simulations
were made with the MR uid pouches modelled as a rectangular
block on the magnets surface. When a product is pressed into
the MR uid pouches the geometry of the pouches will change as
will the shape of the magnetic eld. However, as the permeability
is higher in the MR uid than in the surrounding air the magnetic
eld will mainly ow through the pouches, reducing the change in
magnetic eld strength. Data from the simulations have been used
to calculate the gripping force when gripping the model apple with
a gap setting of 5 mm. Using Eq. (2), the surface that the pouches
cover of the lower side of the apple can be calculated if the area
is divided by 2 (using only the lower half). This results in a contact
area of 1650 mm2 using the radius of the apple and the forming
depth (FD), see Fig. 3, of 7.5 mm (the pouch protrudes 10 mm from
the magnet surface 2.5 mm from the gap setting). From Fig. 5, an
estimated eld strength value of 18 kA/m results in a yield stress of
approximately 11.5 kPa. Multiplying the yield stress with the contact area results in an estimated lift force of 19 N. This value is
higher than the experimental value of 9.5 N which is likely due
to differences in the model and the real prototype. It is also believed that minute bending of the grippers arms during the testing,
might lead to increased movement and lower grip forces, when the
product is forced down in the grip and gripper arms forced apart.
3.3. Gripping impact force
The different gripping modes will affect the gripping cycle in
different ways. If position control is used a higher closing speed
will increase the peak force exerted on the object but will also decrease gripping time as shown in Fig. 6. The force exerted on the
object is due to the displacement/ow of the uid as the object
is pressed into the MR lled pouches. In Fig. 6 the data from a force
mode gripping, described in Section 2.1, is also presented. Here it
can be seen that the gripping can be performed with reduced force,
in this case limited to less than 2.9 N exerted on the object. However the gripping time will be extended.
In Fig. 7, the gripping force data, from the gripping of the large
model strawberry, have been divided with the area in contact with
the object during the gripping process at 95 mm/s. The contact
area has been estimated to that of a sphere with the same diameter
as the model strawberry using Eq. (2):

S r  FD  p  2

where r is the radius, S the surface area and FD the distance the
sphere is pressed into the MR lled pouches. It has been difcult
to nd data of the forces at which a strawberry is bruised. However,
puncture tests have shown that a strawberry skin can be punctured
with as little as 75 kPa and up to 187 kPa using a 2 mm diameter
probe (Monma et al., 1977). When comparing this data with the
forces exerted on the product by the gripper it is still clear that
the gripper exerts, by far, too little force on the product to risk puncture. However, bruising will likely appear before puncture and further testing is needed to guarantee that no bruising has occurred.
3.4. Pick and place evaluation
In Fig. 8, the starting point of the pick and place test with real
products is shown. Randomly mixed and positioned products are
placed under the vision system camera. When an image has been
acquired it is evaluated by the vision system, the data is sent to
the robot and queued up for picking. Using the extracted information of the object position, object type and object width the robot
grips the object with the MR uid gripper. The current robot

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A. Pettersson et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 98 (2010) 332338

Magnetic field strength, H (A/m).

35000
1.5mm

30000

2.75mm
5mm

25000

7mm

20000
15000
10000
5000
0
0

10

15

20

25

30

Position on on magnet radius (mm)

Fig. 5. The gure shows the results from a 2D simulation of the magnetic eld strength. The magnetic eld strength, H (A/m), have been plotted, from the midpoint of the
magnet out to the rim, at a distance of 1.5, 2.75, 5 and 7 mm from the gripper surface.

14
12

35 mm/s
55 mm/s

Force (N)

10

95 mm/s
PID

8
6
4
2
0

500

1000

1500

2000

Time (ms)
Fig. 6. The gure gripping with three different speed settings (35, 55 and 95 mm/s)
and one PID controlled gripping are shown. The resulting gripping times are 790,
540 and 460 ms respectively for increasing speeds and 1300 ms for the PID
regulated force mode gripping. The gap used is 5 mm for all tests.

Fig. 8. Example of how the products are presented in front of the vision camera. On
this picture a mixture of tomatoes, carrots, strawberries, broccoli and grapes is
present.

7000

Pressure (Pa)

6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
0

10

15

20

Position (mm)
Fig. 7. Contact pressure exerted on a model strawberry during gripping. At position
0 mm the grippers surface makes contact with the product. A maximum contact
pressure of 6 kPa is recorded for a forming depth of 16 mm.

station setup allowed for accurate positioning of the gripper by the

robot and to set correct gripper separation using the vision system
data. Each product is gripped using settings suitable for that
product. The products are then placed according to the preferred
and pre programmed layout, see Fig. 9. All products were
handled repetitively during this test and no visual damage was
detected.

Fig. 9. The mixture of fruits and vegetables has been sorted and assembled onto the
outgoing feed using a robot station equipped with the universal MR gripper.

3.5. General observations

With optimization of the magnets and the actuator mechanism
it is likely it is possible to reduce current gripping times, increase

338

A. Pettersson et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 98 (2010) 332338

grip strength and reduce magnet size. The rubber pouch for the MR
uid could be greatly improved to reduce size and facilitate the
ow of the uid. This would increase the grippers use as bulkiness
can be a problem for some applications.
A main advantage of the gripper is that the force at gripping is
spread evenly over a large surface by the rubber pouches, greatly
reducing the risk of bruising. Compared with other soft materials,
that can be used on gripper surfaces, the uid lled pouches have
an unbeatable ability to maximize contact surface area.
If the product is correctly identied by the vision system the
gripping is usually successful. Problems arise if the product has
been identied as narrower or wider, often due to light setting
problems.
The broccoli was difcult both to identify correctly and to grip.
Due to the spongy character of broccoli the gripper does not form
so well to this product and it needs to be clamped instead. If the
product is clamped there are still problems with releasing it since
it expands as the arms separates and tends to stay in the grip or
drop out somewhere during robot motion. The broccoli can be handled with the gripper but it needs another gripping rule strategy.
Furthermore, it is important to dimension the gripper for the intended sizes and shapes to be handled, as even a universal gripper
have a limited range. In this study apple, carrots, strawberries and
tomatoes have been the targeted products. Too small or large products will not allow for enough MR uid to ow under the product
and the resulting lift force will not be sufcient.

4. Conclusions and future work

The gripper has been shown to be able to handle a variety of
shapes and sizes. From the results in this studied the gripper can
be used for very delicate handling even at high handling speeds.
Depending on how delicate the products are this gripper only adds
0.41.3 s to the cycle time.
The robot station demonstrated in this article allows for one
single robot to e.g. ll fruit trays with different fruits instead of
using one robot or one gripper per fruit type. A setup like this is believed to allow for very short product changeover times allowing
for quick response to consumer trends.
Our study has further conrmed that the accuracy, in regard to
vision system and mechanical systems, is satisfactory within the
current application.
To make the gripper meet the hygiene requirements in the food
industry encapsulation of the actuator mechanism, to allow for
hose down washing, will be investigated. Size and shape of the
magnets and the MR uid pouches should be optimized. To reduce
the bulkiness of the gripper arms a permanent magnet solution has
been suggested and will be further investigated.

Performance at high speed pick and place operation and conveyor picking will be evaluated.
Acknowledgment
This study has been carried out with nancial support from the
Commission of the European Communities, Framework 6, Priority
5 Food Quality and Safety, Integrated Project NovelQ FP6-CT2006-015710.
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