RPL Team – Road to Robosoft 2026 in Kanazawa

πŸ€– RoboSoft 2026 Β· Kanazawa, Japan

The Chill Group Goes to Japan

We are Mechatronics Engineering students at Politecnico di Bari. Our soft robotic gripper won the internal challenge β€” and earned us a ticket to the international stage.

πŸ“ Kanazawa, Japan
πŸ“… April 8–10, 2026
πŸ“ Harvesting of Delicate Fruits
πŸ›οΈ Politecnico di Bari
Meet the Team β†’
Our Story

From a University Challenge to an International Competition

It all started within the Mechatronics course taught by Prof. Cacucciolo, P.I. at the RoboPhysics Lab (RPL). He launched a unique challenge to the 2025/2026 class: design an innovative soft gripper capable of tackling the RoboSoft Competition tasks. Our team, the “Chill Group”, successfully developed a winning prototype β€” and as winners of this internal competition, we earned the right to represent Politecnico di Bari at the international RoboSoft 2026 Conference in Kanazawa, Japan.

Our Journey

Road to Kanazawa: Timeline

βœ…
Sep 20, 2025
Challenge Begins
Prof. Cacucciolo launches the gripper design challenge
πŸ†
Jan 13, 2026
Victory at PoliBa
Chill Group wins the internal competition
πŸ› οΈ
Now
Dev & Testing
Refining the prototype for the competition
● Live
πŸ‡―πŸ‡΅
Apr 8–10, 2026
RoboSoft 2026
International competition in Kanazawa
Technical Work

The Mechatronics Challenge & Our Soft Gripper

Six key engineering challenges we tackled to build a competition-ready soft gripper.

Innovative Gripper Design
Designing a new soft end-effector from scratch, capable of adapting its shape to the target without applying excessive force.
Compliance & Softness
Finding the perfect balance in materials and structural design to ensure flexibility for safe interaction and sufficient grasping strength.
Robotic Integration
Interfacing our custom soft gripper with a standard robotic arm, achieving hardware and software communication.
Delicate Pick & Place
Developing control strategies to safely grasp, detach, and deposit delicate silicone berries without compromising their integrity.
Obstacle Avoidance
Navigating a complex, unstructured workspace to reach target fruits while identifying and avoiding leaves and plant stems.
Prototyping & Testing
Iterating our design continuously, moving from early CAD models to rigorous physical testing to ensure readiness for the arena.
Our Solution

Our Gripper

Our soft gripper is the result of months of iterative design and 3D printing. Fully manufactured in TPU and PLA, it exploits compliant geometry to delicately grasp fruits without any pneumatic actuation β€” and is integrated on a P-Rob Eco arm by F&P Robotics.

Full 3D Print
The entire gripper is 3D-printed using TPU for the flexible fingers and PLA for the rigid structure β€” no pneumatic actuation, just geometry-driven compliance.
Geometry-Driven Design
The gripper exploits a carefully engineered compliant geometry to adapt to the fruit shape passively, without sensors or active control β€” pure mechanical intelligence.
P-Rob Eco Integration
The gripper is mounted on a P-Rob Eco collaborative robot by F&P Robotics via a custom-designed mechanical adapter, enabling seamless end-effector integration.
Testbench Validation
We continuously test our gripper on a lab-built testbench that replicates the RoboSoft competition arena, iterating on the design to improve reliability and performance.
Gallery
Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
The People

Meet the Team

Meet the passionate engineering students behind the Chill Group. Brought together by the Mechatronics course at PoliBa, we combined our skills in robotics, mechanical design, and control.

Angelo Catalano
Angelo Catalano
Team Leader Β· PhD Candidate
M.Sc. in Mechatronics & Robotics (NYU + PoliBa). Former Fellow Researcher at IIT Genoa. PhD scholarship “Robot-as-a-service for the Digital Industry”.
LinkedIn Instagram
Luca Mitaritonna
Luca Mitaritonna
Mechatronics Student
Focus on control strategies and obstacle avoidance. Led the physical prototyping, 3D printing, and iterative testing phases.
LinkedIn Instagram
Giuseppe Macchia
Giuseppe Macchia
Mechatronics Student
Focus on robotic integration and interfacing with the collaborative arm. Developed kinematics and trajectory planning.
LinkedIn Instagram
Elisabetta Annese
Elisabetta Annese
Mechatronics Student
Focus on soft materials selection and structural design of the gripper. Responsible for compliance testing and safe interaction mechanics.
LinkedIn Instagram
About the Event

RoboSoft 2026 Β· Kanazawa, Japan πŸ‡―πŸ‡΅

RoboSoft is the world’s premier international conference on soft robotics. The 2026 edition, held in Kanazawa, Japan, challenges international teams to demonstrate advanced soft robotic systems in real-world tasks. We will compete in the “Harvesting of Delicate Fruits” scenario.

3
Competition Days
Apr 8
Start Date
πŸ…
Our Goal
Proudly Supported By

Our Institutional Partners

πŸ›οΈ RoboPhysics Laboratory (RPL)
πŸŽ“ Politecnico di Bari, Italy
πŸ”¬ ERC StG ROBOFLUID Project

Supervised by Prof. Cacucciolo Β· Mechatronics Engineering A.Y. 2025/2026

Live from Kanazawa
Live Updates

πŸ“Έ Liveblog Β· Competition Photos & Videos

We will be posting real-time photos and videos directly from Kanazawa during the competition days. Stay tuned!

πŸ‡―πŸ‡΅

Liveblog activates on April 8!

We’re still packing our bags ✈️ β€” check back starting April 8, 2026 to follow our Kanazawa adventure in real-time, with photos and videos straight from the arena.