Dextrous manipulation with rolling contacts

Dextrous manipulation is a problem of paramount importance in the study of multifingered robotic hands. Given a grasped object, the main objectives are: (a) generate trajectories for the finger joints so that through the effects of contact constraints, the object can be transferred to a goal grasp configuration; and (b) derive control algorithms to realize planned trajectories. In this paper, we integrate the relevant theories of contact kinematics, nonholonomic motion planning and grasp stability to develop a general technique for dextrous manipulation planning with multifingered hands. Experimental results are discussed.