To develop a weight-transducing, vacuum cup end-effector for handling light objects which is unaffected by vacuum supply characteristics (hose stiffness and dynamics).

食品和园艺部门的许多应用涉及从散装容器中人工挑选单个物体，例如配制草莓或蘑菇双关丸的重量。当双网子经过称重单元时，操作员会得到一个信号，指示双网子是太轻还是太重，以及量是多少。然后，操作员添加或拿走适当数量的产品。使用一系列真空杯，可以自动盲目地从双胞胎中挑选草莓。然而，市面上出售的保温杯不会提供所携带产品重量的信息。我们在这个项目中的目标是研究和开发一种重量传感真空杯装置，用于重量轻的物体，不受真空软管硬度或物体与杯子相互作用的影响。然后，我们将使用一系列这些设备来研究多个对象(如草莓)的自动盲采和智能分拣，并将其归入各自的重量类别。

Many applications in the food and horticultural sectors involve manual picking of individual objects from a bulk container e.g. making-up the weight of strawberry or mushroom punnets. As a punnet passes over a weigh cell the operator is given a signal which indicates whether the punnet is too light or too heavy and by what amount. The operator then adds or takes away an appropriate number of products.Using an array of vacuum cups it is possible to blindly pick strawberries out of a punnet automatically. However, commercially available vacuum cups give no information on the weight of the product they are carrying. Our objective in this project is to research and develop a weight-sensing vacuum cup device for lightweight objects that is unaffected by the vacuum hose stiffness or object-cup interactions. We will then use an array of these devices to investigate automatic-blind-picking and intelligent sorting of multiple objects e.g. strawberries into their respective weight categories.