The planning and control of robot dextrous manipulation

Dextrous manipulation is a fundamental problem in the study of multifingered robotic hands. Given a robotic hand and an object to be manipulated by the hand in an environment filled with obstacles, the main objectives of dextrous manipulation are to have the hand grasp the object and transfer it from a start configuration to a goal configuration without collision. To fulfill such a task in general, we will need: (a) a manipulation planner to generate a feasible path for the hand; and (b) a controller to implement the planned path. In this overview paper, we define the manipulation planning problem and present a unified control system architecture for multifingered manipulation (CoSAM/sup 2/). By incorporating the various kinematic and static relationships of a multifingered robotic hand system with proper sensory data inputs at different stages, CoSAM/sup 2/ achieves the various objectives of dextrous manipulation. Theoretical background of the control system design along with real-time experimental results are described.