Object manipulation by integrated control of Independent Anthropomorphic Hand and Arm Systems

Anthropomorphic robotic hand-arm systems have the potential to manipulate various objects in the same manner as a human does. Generally, robot hand manipulation has been studied independently of the manipulation by using robot arms. As the hand and arm cooperate to achieve the same objective, controlling them as a single system is desirable. In this paper, an object manipulation strategy using whole hand-arm systems is proposed. The proposed manipulation strategy provides a method to translate and rotate an object while a robot holds the object based on the planning of the position of each fingertip. A control scheme of the whole hand-arm system to generate the required manipulation motion and the object grasping force is presented. The proposed strategy is experimentally verified using the KITECH upper-body robot with 8-DOF arms and 16-DOF multifingered hands.