Tactile-sensing and augmented reality for robotic manipulation of fruit

Fruit manipulation is a complex task. It is time-consuming, physically exhaustive, causes fruit loss due to human errors, and suffers from shortages as it depends on seasonal workers, making it an ideal application for robotics. However, handling fruits requires high-level robot skills due to different weights, shapes, and textures, to prevent fruit damage and achieve successful picking patterns. The project goal is to combine multimodal sensing (tactile and vision) with augmented reality (AR) to deliver capable robotic system for food handling, in particular fruits. Safe, accurate, and efficient manipulation will be achieved through advanced control of manipulators and through the development of (soft) grippers with tactile and visual sensing capabilities. The robot will be 'programmed' using innovative methods based on augmented reality. This is crucial for rapid prototyping / deploying within the unstructured environment, which is typical of the agriculture setting. The student will have full access to all teaching courses at undergraduate, master, and PhD level, in engineering and wider domains (communication, management, etc.). The student will also learn from a large body of activities at the Control Laboratory, at the Bio-Inspired Robotic Laboratory, and at the Observatory for Human-Machine Collaboration.