Flexible gripping and picking are currently still critical grand challenges for robots. Classical robot applications have a dedicated gripper engineered which is typically optimized for gripping and picking one particular object. For flexible assembly and packaging applications where the properties of objects to grip change frequently or for applications with inherent object variation (e.g., organic products) a different solution is required.

To realize this, Atlas Copco, Flexpack, KUKA, Niko, Octinion, Pickit and Flanders Make join forces to research:

• Generic Flexible gripping concepts of operation and related system architectures which exhibit robustness against Object variability in size and shape and Variability in position and/or pose of feeded objects;

• The system architecture shall be capable to handle variety of objects with variation in size, position and shape
• Fast control system shall be retrainable with new objects (objective: within an hour)
• Fast design of the gripping fingers for a range of new products (objective: within a day)
• Detection and auto correct capability for grasping of objects (objective: pose detection and correction in path planning)