Functional Design and Prototyping of a Novel Soft Fingertip with Variable Stiffness

The paper presents a novel soft fingertip for soft robotics application in greenhouses and protected cultivation. The system is designed to be easily adapted to different commercial end-effectors while not compromising their functionalities. The use of auxiliary vessels with combined air and liquid presence allows the adjustment of the fingertip stiffness to guarantee different values of exerted contact force and stiffness when compressed. A simplified design method to evaluate the influence of the membrane shape and the set-up parameters on the system behavior is reported. The method was compared with experimental measurements on a first system prototype.