1988 Volume 6 Issue 6 Pages 499-506
In assembly tasks, motion of a robot hand or an object grasped by a robot is constrained by the contacting environmental objects. This paper proposes the use of the concept of the instantaneous center of motion to analyze such constrained motion in contact. By the analysis, the following methods which are indispensable in realizing assembly-like tasks are obtained: a contorol method of the motion in contact, a method for observing the state of contact, a method of getting into and detaching from the contact state. Applications of these methods to assembly tasks are also discussed.
