Finger motion planning of a multifingered manipulation with rolling contact

This paper proposes planning methods of an object manipulation with an articulated multifingered robotic hand. Our planner has two main functions: planning of initial contact points for three finger tips, and adaptation of the internal grasping force. The former plans an initial grasp from which a required continuous motion of an object is achieved using fingertips alone while keeping rolling contact with the object. The latter enables the robot to maximize the range of motion of the grasped object. To improve planning efficiency, heuristic strategies are developed including: the error analysis of the failed grasp to find the most promising search direction; and exploitation of geometric shape of the manipulated object. Quality measures of manipulation are introduced to select better grasp among possible candidates.