Object manipulation in robotics faces challengesdue to diverse object shapes, sizes, and fragility. Gripper-basedmethods offer precision and low degrees of freedom (DOF) butthe gripper limits the kind of objects to grasp. On the otherhand, surface-based approaches provide flexibility for handlingfragile and heterogeneous objects but require numerous ac-tuators, increasing complexity. We propose new manipulationhardware that utilizes equally spaced linear actuators placedvertically and connected by a soft surface. In this setup, objectmanipulation occurs on the soft surface through coordinatedmovements of the surrounding actuators. This approach re-quires fewer actuators to cover a large manipulation area,offering a cost-effective solution with a lower DOF compared todense actuator arrays. It also effectively handles heterogeneousobjects of varying shapes and weights, even when they aresignificantly smaller than the distance between actuators. Thismethod is particularly suitable for managing highly fragileobjects in the food industry.
@INPROCEEDINGS{11020841,
author={Ingle, Pratik and Støy, Kasper and Faiña, Andres},
booktitle={2025 IEEE 8th International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft)},
title={Soft Manipulation Surface With Reduced Actuator Density For Heterogeneous Object Manipulation},
year={2025},
volume={},
number={},
pages={1-8},
keywords={Meters;Hands;Actuators;Shape;Robot kinematics;Reinforcement learning;Soft robotics;Hardware;Reliability;Grippers;Manipulation;Soft Robot;Surface Manipulation;Robotic Manipulation Surface},
doi={10.1109/RoboSoft63089.2025.11020841}}
@article{ingle2025heterogeneous,
title={Heterogeneous object manipulation on nonlinear soft surface through linear controller},
author={Ingle, Pratik and St{\o}y, Kasper and Fai{\~n}a, Andres},
journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.14967},
year={2025}
}