Agricultural robotics and automation are facing some challenges rooted in the high variability 9 of products, task complexity, crop quality requirement, and dense vegetation. Such a set of 10 challenges demands a more versatile and safe robotic system. Soft robotics is a young yet 11 promising field of research aimed to enhance these aspects of current rigid robots which 12 makes it a good candidate solution for that challenge. In general, it aimed to provide robots 13 and machines with adaptive locomotion (Ansari et al., 2015), safe and adaptive manipulation 14 (Arleo et al., 2020) and versatile grasping (Langowski et al., 2020). But in agriculture, soft 15 robots have been mainly used in harvesting tasks and more specifically in grasping. In this 16 chapter, we review a candidate group of soft grippers that were used for handling and 17 harvesting crops regarding agricultural challenges i.e. safety in handling and adaptability to 18 the high variation of crops. The review is aimed to show why and to what extent soft grippers 19 have been successful in handling agricultural tasks. The analysis carried out on the results 20 provides future directions for the systematic design of soft robots in agricultural tasks.

翻译：农业机器人与自动化正面临由产品高度多样性、任务复杂性、作物品质要求及茂密植被等因素引发的诸多挑战。这一系列挑战要求机器人系统具备更强的通用性与安全性。软体机器人作为一项新兴且前景广阔的研究领域，旨在增强当前刚性机器人的上述特性，因而成为应对该挑战的理想候选方案。总体而言，其目标是为机器与设备提供自适应运动（Ansari等，2015）、安全自适应操作（Arleo等，2020）及通用抓取（Langowski等，2020）能力。但在农业领域，软体机器人主要应用于收获任务，尤其是在抓取环节。本章针对农业中作物处理与收获所涉及的软体夹爪候选类型进行综述，重点评估其应对农业挑战（如操作安全性及对高度变异作物的适应性）的能力。本综述旨在阐释软体夹爪为何以及如何在多大程度上成功完成农业操作任务。基于结果的分析为农业任务中软体机器人的系统性设计提供了未来方向。