A team from Queen Mary’s Robotic Systems Research Group earned an impressive second place at the prestigious IEEE RoboSoft 2025 Manipulation Competition, held 23–26 April in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Led by Senior Lecturer Dr Ketao Zhang, Director of the Robotics Systems Research (RSR) Group at the Centre for Advanced Robotics at Queen Mary (ARQ), the team included Postdoctoral Research Assistant Dr Chen Liu and PhD student Shijia Liu, with joint supervision by Prof Lei Su.

Now in its eighth year, the international RoboSoft conference focused on “Interdisciplinarity and Widening Horizons,” celebrating collaborative, cross-disciplinary advances in soft robotics.

The Queen Mary team competed against seven top international teams in a demanding challenge to develop robotic manipulators capable of harvesting delicate fruit. Their innovative soft robotic fingertip technology, developed as part of the Farming Future project and funded by Innovate UK, was a standout.

As part of this project, the team have developed grape-picking robots to support more efficient vineyard harvesting.

“This achievement underscores Queen Mary’s leadership in cutting-edge soft robotics and its real-world applications in precision agriculture,” said Dr Zhang.

"I'm proud to have achieved second place at the IEEE RoboSoft 2025 Manipulation Competition,” added Dr Chen Liu. “It’s been a journey of learning, collaboration, and growth.”