Pivoting: A new method of graspless manipulation of object by robot fingers

Graspless manipulation refers to operations in which a robot attempts to change the position and posture of an object without grasping it. Typical examples of graspless manipulation which have been studied so far are pushing and tumbling. This paper proposes a new method of graspless manipulation, pivoting, in which robot fingers maneuver an object in the same way that person moving furniture, as if an object walks on the floor by using appropriate vertices as virtual feet. This paper introduces the concept of this pivoting operation, describes its characteristics and analyzes it mathematically, points out the need for visual guidance for the precise performance of pivoting, and presents experiments with pivoting manipulation in connection with visual guidance.