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ABSTRACT As modern agriculture faces increasing demands for efficiency and automation, this study presents a novel, untethered soft gripper system designed for autonomous and efficient harvesting. At the core of this innovation is a piston‐driven, pneumatically actuated gripper embedded with flexible tactile sensors, enabling operation without an external air source. The system integrates a compact motorized syringe, forming a closed‐loop fluid circuit that provides precise pressure control for adaptive grasping. The pneumatic actuation mechanism regulates air pressure from −30 to 180 kPa, allowing the gripper to perform delicate and adaptive handling, particularly suited for tree fruits and other fragile crops. A key feature of the system is its intelligent control mechanism, which seamlessly combines pneumatic and electrical systems to enhance autonomy and versatility in agricultural applications. The integration of size recognition and adaptive grasping, enabled by force feedback from embedded tactile sensors, ensures safe, efficient, and damage‐free harvesting. Demonstrating exceptional potential for autonomous agricultural operations, the untethered soft gripper system offers enhanced independence, maneuverability, and adaptability across diverse harvesting environments. Its ability to optimize crop handling while minimizing damage highlights its significance as a pioneering solution for the future of automated agriculture. 

Abstract Soft robots have attracted increasing attention due to their excellent versatility and broad applications. In this article, we present a minimally designed soft crawling robot (SCR) capable of robust locomotion in unstructured pipes with various geometric/material properties and surface topology. In particular, the SCR can squeeze through narrow pipes smaller than its cross section and propel robustly in spiked pipes. The gait pattern and locomotion mechanism of this robot are experimentally investigated and analysed by the finite element analysis, revealing that the resultant forward frictional force is generated due to the asymmetric mechanical properties along the length direction of the robot. The proposed simple yet working SCR could inspire novel designs and applications of soft robots in unstructured narrow canals such as large intestines or industrial pipelines. 

The launch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) and its follow-on NOAA Joint Polar Satellite Systems (JPSS) satellites marks the beginning of a new era of operational satellite observations of the Earth and atmosphere for environmental applications with high spatial resolution and sampling rate. The S-NPP and JPSS are equipped with five instruments, each with advanced design in Earth sampling, including the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS), the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS), the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), and the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES). Among them, the ATMS is the new generation of microwave sounder measuring temperature profiles from the surface to the upper stratosphere and moisture profiles from the surface to the upper troposphere, while CrIS is the first of a series of advanced operational hyperspectral sounders providing more accurate atmospheric and moisture sounding observations with higher vertical resolution for weather and climate applications. The OMPS instrument measures solar backscattered ultraviolet to provide information on the concentrations of ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere, and VIIRS provides global observations of a variety of essential environmental variables over the land, atmosphere, cryosphere, and ocean with visible and infrared imagery. The CERES instrument measures the solar energy reflected by the Earth, the longwave radiative emission from the Earth, and the role of cloud processes in the Earth’s energy balance. Presently, observations from several instruments on S-NPP and JPSS-1 (re-named NOAA-20 after launch) provide near real-time monitoring of the environmental changes and improve weather forecasting by assimilation into numerical weather prediction models. Envisioning the need for consistencies in satellite retrievals, improving climate reanalyses, development of climate data records, and improving numerical weather forecasting, the NOAA/Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) has been reprocessing the S-NPP observations for ATMS, CrIS, OMPS, and VIIRS through their life cycle. This article provides a summary of the instrument observing principles, data characteristics, reprocessing approaches, calibration algorithms, and validation results of the reprocessed sensor data records. The reprocessing generated consistent Level-1 sensor data records using unified and consistent calibration algorithms for each instrument that removed artificial jumps in data owing to operational changes, instrument anomalies, contaminations by anomaly views of the environment or spacecraft, and other causes. The reprocessed sensor data records were compared with and validated against other observations for a consistency check whenever such data were available. The reprocessed data will be archived in the NOAA data center with the same format as the operational data and technical support for data requests. Such a reprocessing is expected to improve the efficiency of the use of the S-NPP and JPSS satellite data and the accuracy of the observed essential environmental variables through either consistent satellite retrievals or use of the reprocessed data in numerical data assimilations.