This technology holds significant potential for food automation. The challenges lie in flexibility, hygiene, durability, and cost-effectiveness. Only when these conditions are met can soft grippers transition from an innovative solution to a stable component of automated food production lines.
By Stefania Milanello
The use of soft robotic grippers in the food industry is an increasingly interesting topic, but their adoption in industrial practice remains limited. Handling unpackaged food is, in fact, much more complex than handling pre-packaged products. Food can be fragile, moist, irregular, deformable, or change behavior depending on temperature, ripeness, and processing conditions. For this reason, the development of soft grippers that are truly reliable, hygienic, and easily integrable into production lines remains a significant challenge.
The promise is clear : to improve gripping, adapt to different products, reduce format changeover times, limit waste, and make automation more flexible. However, there is still a gap to bridge between research, prototypes, and large-scale industrial applications. In recent years, many manufacturing industries have introduced robotic systems to increase efficiency, quality, and production continuity. The advantages are well known: greater speed, less variability, a reduction in repetitive tasks, and the ability to operate in challenging environments.
In the food sector, however, robotic automation has followed a more gradual path. Robots are widely used in end-of-line operations, such as packaging, boxing, and palletizing, while they are less common in stages where direct handling of the food product is required. The difference is substantial. It is one thing to pick up a rigid package or a box with a predictable shape and weight; it is quite another to grasp a croissant, a wet apple, a portion of fish, or a piece of chicken arranged randomly on a conveyor belt.
In the first case, the geometry is regular and repeatable. In the second, each piece may differ from the previous one in shape, texture, surface, and fragility. In these cases, the grip can become unstable, difficult to repeat, or even damage the product. Designing a specific gripper for each food item would be possible but impractical: it would increase costs, format changeover times, maintenance, and operational complexity.
Food Automation and the Challenges of Robotic Gripping
One of the main limitations of food automation is the difficulty of matching the flexibility of a human operator. A person can adapt their movements naturally: they assess the product’s texture, adjust their grip if the object slips, modulate their force, and successfully handle foods that are stacked or arranged irregularly. For a robot, however, these operations require much more advanced vision, control, and gripping systems. This does not mean that robotics lacks great potential in the food sector.
On the contrary, the benefits are significant. An automated system can ensure operational continuity, repeatability, reduced errors, and improved hygiene. This last aspect is particularly relevant for ready-to-eat products or those intended for simple reheating, where microbiological contamination can pose a significant risk. The challenge of food handling is not new. Even in early studies on the automation of cooking and food preparation, it had become clear that grasping, dispensing, and positioning were among the most critical issues.
A historic example is Patri’s 1991 work, which involved using a Puma 760 robot to serve dishes according to preset recipes. Although this was a theoretical project, it already highlighted at the time how complex it was to handle food using simple, generalizable technical solutions. Even today, the problem remains relevant, and the lack of flexible gripping devices continues to be one of the main obstacles to the widespread use of robotics in the direct handling of unpackaged food.
From Research to Industrial Applications
Soft robotics represents one of the most promising avenues for overcoming the limitations of traditional grippers. Soft grippers can deform, adapt to the shape of the product, and distribute gripping force more effectively. This makes them suitable for pick-and-place, portioning, packaging, and handling applications involving bulk or irregular products. The available solutions can be categorized into several families. One of the most common is that of suction cup grippers.
They are compact and require contact with only one surface of the product. They work well with smooth and fairly stable foods, but may lose effectiveness when dealing with irregular geometries, porous surfaces, moisture, or surface liquids. In these cases, the vacuum seal can become unstable and compromise the repeatability of the grip. To increase reliability, vacuum is sometimes combined with soft elements or flexible fingers. This gives rise to hybrid systems, which are more adaptable to the shape of the food.
These systems can improve versatility, but they also introduce new complexities: more components to clean, greater attention to hygienic design, and more adjustments to manage. A second approach involves wrap-around grippers. These grippers partially or completely surround the product, distributing the force over a larger surface area. They are suitable for rounded or fairly regular-shaped products, such as tomatoes, apples, eggs, citrus fruits, or certain baked goods.
The advantage is a gentler grip compared to a rigid gripper. The limitation arises when the product’s shape varies significantly or when the surface is slippery: in these cases, a precise balance must be struck between adaptability, applied force, and the risk of damage. Soft-finger grippers are also very common. In this case, multiple flexible elements are arranged in different configurations depending on the product being handled. Parallel configurations may be suitable for elongated or cylindrical foods, such as bananas, cucumbers, or eggplants. Radial or centered configurations, on the other hand, are more effective with spherical or irregular products, such as apples, oranges, kiwis, or baked goods. ’s finger grippers can also be used for more complex foods, such as noodles, portions of meat, fish, or ingredients intended for package assembly.
In these cases, the challenge is not only to grasp the product but to do so without breaking, crushing, or altering its appearance. Actuation systems can be pneumatic, cable-driven, magnetic, or hybrid, depending on the required force, cycle speed, and hygiene requirements of the production line. Industrial interest in these technologies is confirmed by the availability of commercial solutions already tailored to the food sector. OnRobot, for example, offers a soft gripper for food-grade applications, featuring interchangeable and washable silicone cups, designed to handle delicate or irregular products in pick-and-place applications. Another example is Schmalz’s mGrip system, developed for direct food handling and the automated handling of sensitive food products.
The system uses flexible fingers made of food-contact-compliant materials and can be configured according to the product, the gripping position, and the line speed. The IP69K hygienic versions are designed for environments subject to frequent washing and intensive sanitization. Applications include baked goods, fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, and foods that are difficult to grip, such as croissants, bagels, apples, or chicken thighs. Modularity is a key feature in these types of solutions.
The number, position, and angle of the fingers can be adapted to the product without completely changing the gripping principle. This reduces reconfiguration time and makes the technology more attractive for production lines that handle different products. Also particularly noteworthy is the approach taken by Soft Robotics, which combines compliant gripping, 3D vision, and artificial intelligence algorithms with mGrip and mGripAI. The goal is not only to grasp a product but also to recognize its position, orientation, and arrangement on conveyor belts, trays, or containers. This integration is especially useful when food items do not arrive in an orderly fashion but are arranged randomly or stacked on top of one another.
Future Prospects for Soft Robotic Grippers
The prospects for the development of soft grippers for the food industry primarily concern grip reliability, hygiene, sanitizability, force control, and integration with sensors and vision systems. The main challenge is achieving a stable grip without damaging the food. It seems like a simple goal, but in many cases, this is precisely the most delicate aspect. Precise and dynamic force control will be one of the most important factors. Contact surfaces will also play a decisive role. High- -friction materials, microtextures, functional coatings, or differentiated surface geometries can improve the grip on moist or irregular products, reducing slippage without increasing pressure too much.
Another area of development concerns materials and manufacturing processes. 3D printing and additive manufacturing make it possible to produce flexible fingers, pneumatic chambers, and complex geometries that are difficult to achieve using traditional methods. However, simply producing a soft component is not enough: surface finish, durability, mechanical strength, and compatibility with food environments must also be considered. Optimizing actuation will also be very important. In finger grippers, the synchronization of movements and the uniform distribution of force are essential for achieving a stable and repeatable grip.
Pneumatic systems, tendon mechanisms, compact actuators, or hybrid solutions can help reduce weight, complexity, and energy consumption while maintaining a good level of versatility. Sensors will play an increasingly important role. Tactile sensors, force sensors, slip detection systems, and advanced control algorithms can make the grip smarter. An effective soft gripper should not merely close around the food item but should also determine whether contact is correct, whether the product is slipping, or whether the applied force is excessive.
Integration with 2D and 3D vision systems can further improve performance. In many food applications, in fact, the challenge is not only how to grasp the product but also how to recognize and locate it. On a conveyor belt or inside a crate, food items may be stacked on top of one another, randomly oriented, or partially hidden. Machine vision and artificial intelligence can help the robot identify the best grasping point and choose the most suitable strategy.
It is unlikely that a single universal gripper suitable for every food item will ever be developed. A more realistic approach is to consider modular, configurable, and intelligent systems capable of adapting to different product categories while maintaining a common structure. In this way, food companies could achieve greater flexibility without having to completely redesign the system every time they switch products.
In conclusion, soft grippers represent a technology with significant potential for food automation, especially in applications where traditional gripping methods reach their limits. To become truly widespread, however, they will need to prove that they are not only gentle and flexible but also reliable, washable, durable, and cost-effective from an industrial standpoint. Only under these conditions can they transition from an innovative solution to a standard component of automated food production lines.
