Dextrous manipulation planning by grasp transformation

A novel framework for dextrous manipulation planning based on transformations between canonical grasp configurations is proposed in this paper. The proposed approach is inspired by the observation that human hand is capable of a large number of manipulative tasks with a few finger postures or grasps. It is postulated that the key to the control of manipulation tasks, therefore, lies in the combination of these grasps. The proposed framework first identifies important or canonical grasps, defined in terms of contact pairs between topological features of the hand and the object, and then obtains the possible transitions between the grasps. With the result expressed in the form of a grasp transformation graph, general manipulation tasks can then be planned by searching the graph for a path connecting the initial and final configurations of the tasks. The proposed approach is demonstrated by experiments using a three-finger hand performing object manipulation tasks.