The public notification of the proposed award projects for the 2024 Machinery Industry Science and Technology Award has concluded. At the end of October, the China Machinery Industry Federation and the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society released the award winner list for the 2024 China Machinery Industry Science and Technology Award and presented the certificates of honor. Among them, the project titled “Non-destructive Automated Gripping Technology for Irregular and Fragile Items and Its Industrialization,” jointly submitted by the University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing Soft Robot Technology Co., Ltd. (SRT), Beihang University, and Realman Intelligent Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd., won the Second Prize for Science and Technology Progress Award.
Certificate of Honor for the 2024 Machinery Industry Science and Technology Award
(Second Prize for Science and Technology Progress Award)
The China Machinery Industry Science and Technology Award is a national-level comprehensive science and technology award in the machinery industry, jointly established by the China Machinery Industry Federation and the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society, and approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China. It is the only nationally approved award in China’s machinery industry. The winning projects are characterized by numerous innovations, high technical sophistication, and notable social and economic benefits.
This project addressed prominent challenges such as the difficult gripping of irregular and fragile items and the complexity of production line changeovers. It carried out key technology research in areas including the bionic design of flexible end-effector material, structure, and actuation; high‑reliability, high‑strength batch manufacturing; ultra‑lightweight, highly integrated, high‑precision robotic arms; and precise, safe arm‑hand collaborative grasping. The project achieved industrialization and produced the following innovative results:
1. An innovative multi‑objective collaborative bionic design method integrating material, structure, and actuation was proposed. A variety of flexible gripping soft dexterous hands were developed, including a sensor‑integrated, variable‑stiffness, rigid‑flexible coupled multi‑finger flexible end‑effector, a bionic fully enveloping adaptive flexible gripper, and a crab‑claw‑like high‑precision micro vacuum gripper.
2. A quantitative modification technology for high‑elasticity polymer materials was developed, overcoming the challenge of seam‑free, integral molding of complex internal cavities in flexible end‑effectors. A systematic inspection and testing system for materials, manufacturing, and finished product reliability was established.
3. A vision‑tactile fusion framework for precise and safe arm‑hand collaborative grasping was innovatively proposed. A rapidly deployable, ultra‑lightweight humanoid robotic arm was developed, and an arm‑hand collaborative robot system tailored for industries handling irregular and fragile items was established.
The project has been granted 32 national invention patents, 45 utility model patents, and 9 software copyright registrations, and has formulated 1 group standard. The achievements have been successfully applied in industries such as food and fresh produce, 3C electronics, and biomedicine, yielding significant economic and social benefits.
As the soft robotics industry enters a fast‑track development phase, SRT will continue to pursue innovation and breakthroughs, refine its business capabilities, promote the application of soft robotics technology to more fields, and provide flexible support for intelligent manufacturing.