Abstract
Kinematics of grasping and manipulation of multifingered hand (GMMF) where multi-fingersurfaces contact with an object are discussed. There are many researches about GMMF problem, but most of them discuss on the case of fingertip contacts. In this paper the following problems have been investigated.
(1) GMFF problems are classified to direct kinematics, inverse kinematics for grasping and manipulation, which are peculiar to the fingersurface contact. In each case the problems are formulated.
(2) For the manipulation of an object, kinematic relationship between object and finger-joint motions are analyzed in the case when the contact motion is pure rolling (PR), twist rolling (TR), and slide rolling (SR). In each case the number of finger and degree-of-freedom of fingers necessary to grasp and manipulate the object are shown.
(3) Manipulation kinematics is characterized by the equations for incremental variations of object motion and finger motion, mediated by contact point variations, unsimilar to the manipulation of manipulator arm kinematics where the equations are expressed by absolute displacement.
Some examples of the computer simulation of grasping and manipulation using the above-mentioned formulation for various conditions are shown.
