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A novel robotic gripper that uses physical entanglement to gently and reliably automate the handling of soft, flexible, or tangled agricultural materials.
About
Weird Gripper Company is a robotics spinout from King’s College London, pioneering a new approach to automation through entanglement-based gripping. Our brand stands for bold innovation, solving real-world problems that traditional technologies can’t—especially in agriculture, packaging, and recycling. We combine deep scientific expertise with a commitment to practical impact, enabling automation of delicate, irregular, and previously ungrippable items. At our core, we are unconventional thinkers delivering robust, scalable solutions that redefine what robots can handle.
Key Benefits
Our technology:
- Automates tasks traditional grippers can’t – Handles soft, flexible, or entangled items like herbs, saplings, or netted produce.
- Reduces labour dependency – Enables automation of labour-intensive tasks, improving resilience and lowering costs.
- Minimises damage and waste – Gentle gripping prevents bruising, tearing, or crushing of delicate products.
- Energy-efficient and low-maintenance – Passive gripping system requires no power, suction, or complex control.
- Easily integrated – Compatible with standard robotic arms and farm automation systems.
- Scalable and reconfigurable – Gripper design can be tailored to a range of crop types, sizes, and workflows.
- Supports safer working conditions – Reduces physical strain and repetitive handling for human workers.
Applications
Our primary target market includes businesses in the agriculture and horticulture sectors that rely on manual handling of delicate, flexible, or entangled materials. This includes:
- Commercial nurseries and growers handling bare-root trees, seedlings, or vine crops that require grading, bundling, or packing.
- Fresh produce packhouses that process herbs, leafy greens, and net-packed fruits where conventional grippers fail or cause damage.
- Agri-tech and farm robotics integrators seeking advanced end-effectors to handle complex harvesting, packing, or transplanting tasks.
- Recycling and waste management operators dealing with entangled items like textiles, wires, or soft plastics in automated sorting environments.
These users are united by a shared need to reduce labour costs, automate manual processes, and improve throughput and consistency, especially where conventional automation falls short.