Soft Gripper for Butter Cookie Handling: How We Solved Slipping Without Damaging Delicate Cookies

In bakery automation, handling delicate butter cookies is more challenging than it looks.Round butter cookies are fragile, easily deformed, and often vary slightly in size after baking. Traditional vacuum cups struggle with porous or uneven surfaces, while rigid mechanical grippers can easily leave marks or crack the product.This case demonstrates how our soft robotic gripper successfully handled spherical butter cookies while solving an additional challenge—product slipping during transport.

The customer needed an automated pick-and-place solution for freshly baked butter cookies.Product Specifications

• Product: Butter Cookie Ball
• Height: Approximately 30 mm
• Diameter Range: 28–38 mm
• Material: Soft baked food
• Surface: Slightly oily after baking
• Requirement: Damage-free handling and stable transfer

The goal was to move the cookies from the baking line to the next production process without affecting product appearance or quality.

The Initial Challenge

Our soft gripper easily adapted to the size variation of the cookies.Its compliant fingers wrapped naturally around each cookie, allowing gentle gripping without leaving pressure marks or causing cracks.However, another issue appeared during testing.Because butter cookies have a relatively smooth and slightly oily surface, combined with rapid robot acceleration, some cookies tended to slide downward during transportation.Although the gripping force was intentionally kept low to protect the cookies, the reduced friction increased the risk of slipping.

Our Solution

Instead of increasing gripping force—which could damage the cookies—we optimized the contact interface.The final solution combined three components:

• Soft robotic gripper
• Flexible Soft Wings
• PTFE (Teflon) finger sleeves

The Soft Wings increased the contact area around the cookie, providing more stable support during movement.Meanwhile, the PTFE finger sleeves optimized the interaction between the gripper and the cookie surface, helping maintain a consistent grip while preserving the softness required for food handling.This combination significantly improved transportation stability without increasing compression on the cookies.+

Delicate food products require more than just a gentle gripper—they require the right combination of gripping technology and contact optimization.In this project, the soft robotic gripper successfully achieved damage-free handling of butter cookies. By combining Soft Wings with PTFE finger sleeves, the slipping issue was effectively resolved without increasing gripping force, delivering both product protection and reliable automation.If your production line handles fragile bakery products or other delicate food items, a customized soft gripping solution can improve both product quality and production efficiency