Grasping behavior of the human hand during tomato picking

Abstract To comprehensively investigate the grasping behavior of the human hand during tomato picking, a new 16-channel data acquisition e-glove was developed and subsequently worn to randomly pick 60 tomatoes in a greenhouse. A 2-channel surface electromyography was used to record the electrical activity of the flexor pollicis longus and flexor digitorum superficialis in real time. Each fruit-picking process was divided into fruit-stem separation, fruit moving and release stages based on two peak pressures applied by the thumb distal region. The total grasping pressure at the moment of fruit-stem separation primarily depended on the intersection angle between the first and second stems of a fruit. Conversely, at the moment of fruit release, the total grasping pressure primarily depended on the fruit size (p