Our SoftGrip consortium gathered at the Teagasc facilities in Dublin between the 12-16th of December 2022. The reason was to conduct the latest data collection session. All delegations from the project partners came together to assemble the SoftGrip system and gather essential data to keep on working on its respective parts.

During the first two days, the aim was to integrate all the subsystems, tune the control parameters and perform preliminary testing before diving into the data collection process. The following day was focused on running outrooting trials with a short-fingered gripper as well as sensing and mushroom discolouration tests. Additionally, the focus was on the outrooting tests and the responsiveness of the different system parts. In a nutshell, the SoftGrip team assessed the gripper's ability to grasp mushrooms and deal with their delicate nature adequately.

Once all the necessary information was collected and the final tests were through, the systems were disassembled, and future steps were planned based on the new learnings from the testings.