Soft-yet-firm robohand assesses the ripeness of produce that it picks

- For decades, robotic grippers have struggled with delicate produce — hard grippers can bruise fruit, while soft grippers lack the dexterity to pick without dropping. This has made automated harvesting a hard problem for agriculture. - A team at the University of British Columbia has developed a new gripper that combines a soft, flexible outer membrane with a rigid inner skeleton. When it grabs a piece of fruit, embedded sensors measure how much the fruit yields under pressure — essentially testing firmness in real time without squeezing hard enough to cause damage. - The dual-stiffness design is novel because it lets the hand both grasp reliably and give a ripeness assessment on the fly (unripe fruit feel stiffer, ripe fruit give slightly). That extra sensing step could let harvesting robots pick only fruit that is ready, reducing waste and labor costs. - The work is led by Dr. Mirza Saquib Sarwar and reported in *Nature* journal / *New Atlas* — it's early-stage but points toward more intelligent, sensor-rich soft robotics for food handling.