On grasp synthesis and planning of multifingered robot hands for a telemanipulation task

In the context of dextrous telemanipulation, considerably less attention has been paid to task level planning and control problems. In the Laboratoire de Robotique de Paris (LRP) we are investigating the problems associated with the transformation of the human hand motions to teleoperate a robotic slave hand. The telemanipulation system consists of: the "master", a dextrous hand with force feedback which measures the 14 finger joints developed at the LRP; and the "slave", a mechanical hand, and the control procedures. In this paper we consider the problem of hand transformations between the master and slave device. After an analysis of some specific requirements to achieve the grasp operation for a multifingered hand in this context, we present two approaches for synthesising the control required in the slave side to achieve a telemanipulation task.