Low-Cost, Reliable Soft Arm for Robotic Tree Fruit Operation Phase II
Author: Ming Luo
Published: 2026
Summary: One of the major challenges facing Washington State tree fruit growers is sourcing adequate labor for critical operations such as harvesting and pruning. To address this issue, many growers and organizations have invested in the development of labor-saving technologies, including robotics. In particular, there has been significant interest in research and implementation of tree fruit harvesting and pruning robots. Our work contributes to this growing field by introducing a novel soft-growing manipulator platform for the orchard environment. Over three years of project development, our softgrowing manipulator has demonstrated the ability to automatically harvest apples in a variety of scenarios using onboard perception in a lab-simulated environment. Furthermore, our first field study has shown the potential to achieve a multi-compact robotic solution capable of picking apples in approximately two seconds each, with low-cost machinery and maintenance that can be adopted by all growers.
