SCU-Hand: Soft Conical Universal Robotic Hand for Scooping Granular Media from Containers of Various Sizes

ICRA2025

Tomoya Takahashi¹Cristian C. Beltran-Hernandez¹Yuki Kuroda¹Kazutoshi Tanaka¹Masahi Hamaya¹Yoshitaka Ushiku¹

¹OMRON SINIC X Corporation

TL;DR This study proposes SCU-Hand, a soft and reconfigurable end-effector designed to scoop powdered materials from containers of various sizes using a general-purpose robotic arm. By deforming a single thin sheet into a conical shape, the SCU-Hand achieves adaptive surface contact without complex sensors or control algorithms, while maintaining the stiffness needed for efficient scooping. Experimental results demonstrate that SCU-Hand achieves over 95% scooping performance across different container sizes and granular materials, outperforming conventional rigid tools by up to 20%.

Overview

Automating small-scale experiments in materialsscience presents challenges due to the heterogeneous natureof experimental setups. This study introduces the SCU-Hand(Soft Conical Universal Robot Hand), a novel end-effectordesigned to automate the task of scooping powdered samplesfrom various container sizes using a robotic arm. The SCU-Hand employs a flexible, conical structure that adapts to dif-ferent container geometries through deformation, maintainingconsistent contact without complex force sensing or machinelearning-based control methods. Its reconfigurable mechanismallows for size adjustment, enabling efficient scooping fromdiverse container types. By combining soft robotics principleswith a sheet-morphing design, our end-effector achieves highflexibility while retaining the necessary stiffness for effectivepowder manipulation. We detail the design principles, fabri-cation process, and experimental validation of the SCU-Hand.Experimental validation showed that the scooping capacity isabout 20% higher than that of a commercial tool, with ascooping performance of more than 95% for containers ofsizes between 67 mm to 110 mm. This research contributesto laboratory automation by offering a cost-effective, easilyimplementable solution for automating tasks such as materialssynthesis and characterization processes.

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Tomoya Takahashi

Citation


# arXiv version
@article{takahashi2025scuhand,
    title={SCU-Hand: Soft Conical Universal Robotic Hand for Scooping Granular Media from Containers of Various Sizes}, 
    author={Takahashi, Tomoya and Beltran-Hernandez, Cristian C. and Kuroda, Yuki and Tanaka, Kazutoshi and Hamaya, Masashi and  Ushiku, Yoshitaka},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.04162},
    year={2025}
}
# ICRA version
@inproceedings{takahashi2025scuhand,
  title={SCU-Hand: Soft Conical Universal Robotic Hand for Scooping Granular Media from Containers of Various Sizes},
  author={Takahashi, Tomoya and Beltran-Hernandez, Cristian C. and Kuroda, Yuki and Tanaka, Kazutoshi and Hamaya, Masashi and  Ushiku, Yoshitaka},
  journal={2025 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (ICRA)},
  year={2025}
}