Dextrous Manipulation by Rolling and Finger Gaiting

Abstract

Many practical dextrous manipulation tasks involve large-scale motion of the grasped object while maintaining a stable grasp. To plan such tasks, one must control both the motion of the object and the contact locations, while also adhering to the workspace constraints typical of multi-fingered hands. In this paper, we integrate the relevant theories of contact kinematics, nonholonomic motion planning, coordinated object manipulation, grasp stability and finger gaits to develop a general framework for dextrous manipulation planing. To illustrate our approach, the framework is applied to the problem of manipulating a sphere with three hemi-spherical fingertips. The simulation results are presented. ( Full Paper in pdf)