Binding of food materials with a tension-sensitive elastic thread

Difficulties in automatic handling of many food materials are due to their softness and easy deformability by external forces. Excessive deformation of food materials damages their quality and must be avoided. Another difficulty in automatic food handling is the irregular shape and size of food materials, requiring robotic hands to adjust for differences in shapes and sizes. This study describes binding-based robotic handling of food materials, applying the concept of binding to the grasping of food materials. A tension-sensitive elastic thread was used to bind a food material, enabling the force applied to the material to be measured. Based on the concept, we developed a binding hand prototype and performed preliminary experiments to show that this binding hand could pick up a cup with food materials despite its location.