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EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Agri-Food Robotics: AgriFoRwArdS - Omar Faris

Omar Faris

  • University of Cambridge

Research Interests

Soft robots, tactile sensing, neuromorphic event-based systems, grasping and manipulation

Publications

Stevenson, R., Paparas, D., Faris, O., Xu, X., Merchant, C., Smith, E., Nicholls, B., & Fox, C. (2025). Open Source Hardware Whisker Sensor. In: Huda, M.N., Wang, M., Kalganova, T. (eds) Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems. TAROS 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 15051. Springer, Cham. [December 2024].

Torre, F., Faris, O., Johnson, P., & Calisti, M. (2025) Toward autonomous blackberry harvesting with a soft gripper and vision-controlled robotic arm, 2025 IEEE 8th International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft). [June 2025].

Presentations

“Benchmarking Protocols for Soft Robotic Harvesting” (poster) – AgriFoRwArdS CDT Annual Conference 2024: Robots in Action [July 2024] – Norwich, UK.

“Tactile Sensing and Augmented Reality for Robotic Manipulation of Fruit” – AgriFoRwArdS CDT Quarterly PhD Research Progress Meeting & new student welcome [October 2024] – Cambridge, UK.

“Augmented Reality for the Programming of Robotic Manipulation​” (oral) – AgriFoRwArdS Seminar Day and Quarterly Research Progress Meeting [December 2024] – Lincoln, UK.

“Virtual Model Control and Augmented Reality for Human-Robot Object Handovers” (oral) – AgriFoRwArdS CDT Annual Conference 2025 [May 2025] – Online.

“Virtual Model Control for Human-Robot Collaboration: Case Study on Object Handovers” (poster) – University of Cambridge AgriFoRwArdS Industry Event [May 2025] – Cambridge, UK.

“Baa Force One” (oral) – AgriFoRwArdS CDT Summer School 2025: Going to the Dogs! [June 2025] – Lincoln, UK.

“Virtual Model Control for Human-Robot Collaboration: Case Study on Object Handovers” (poster) – Inspiring Innovation through Industry-Academia Collaboration [June 2025] – Cambridge, UK.

“Virtual Model Control for Human-Robot Collaboration” (poster) – Joint Robotics CDT Annual Conference 2025 [September 2025] – Oxford, UK.

Activities and Outputs

About me

I am Omar Faris, and I am from Jordan. I have BSc & MSc degrees in Mechanical Engineering. After the MSc, I spent two years at Khalifa University as a Research Associate where I worked on projects related to soft robotics and event-based tactile sensing. I chose to join the CDT because it is an excellent chance to broaden my knowledge about robotics and apply it in agricultural applications, which can leave a great positive impact on the society. I will be studying my PhD at the University of Cambridge

MSc Project

Benchmarking Protocols for Soft Robotic Harvesting

The project aims to develop benchmarking approaches and experimental protocols for crop harvesting using soft robotic grippers. The protocols will include a set of metrics to quantify the performance of the overall harvesting task along with functionality of the grippers used in the harvesting process. The project will include examples of the proposed protocols and benchmarks performed by existing soft grippers on a set of crops. The final goal is to introduce a standardized approach for using soft grippers in crop harvesting applications that allow researchers to quantitively assess their developed grippers and compare their performance against other solutions.

PhD Project

Tactile-sensing and augmented reality for robotic manipulation of fruit

Fruit manipulation is a complex task. It is time-consuming, physically exhaustive, causes fruit loss due to human errors, and suffers from shortages as it depends on seasonal workers, making it an ideal application for robotics. However, handling fruits requires high-level robot skills due to different weights, shapes, and textures, to prevent fruit damage and achieve successful picking patterns. The project goal is to combine multimodal sensing (tactile and vision) with augmented reality (AR) to deliver capable robotic system for food handling, in particular fruits. Safe, accurate, and efficient manipulation will be achieved through advanced control of manipulators and through the development of (soft) grippers with tactile and visual sensing capabilities. The robot will be ‘programmed’ using innovative methods based on augmented reality. This is crucial for rapid prototyping / deploying within the unstructured environment, which is typical of the agriculture setting. The student will have full access to all teaching courses at undergraduate, master, and PhD level, in engineering and wider domains (communication, management, etc.). The student will also learn from a large body of activities at the Control Laboratory, at the Bio-Inspired Robotic Laboratory, and at the Observatory for Human-Machine Collaboration.

Omar’s PhD project is being carried out under the primary supervision of Dr Fulvio Forni.