Acquisition of an Object Model by Manipulation with a Multifingered Hand

Abstract

This paper describes a manipulation system which can acquire a model of an object while manipulating it with a multifingered hand. We assume that each finger of the hand has a 6-axis force-torque sensor at its fingertip and that the object to be manipulated is a polyhedron. When the finger is in contact with a face of the object, the position and normal of the contact point can be calculated by using the data from the force-torque sensor. These parameters are then used to determine the plane of the contact face. The proposed method acquires the object model by intersecting the determined planes and incrementally refines it by manipulating the object. During manipulation, the proposed method checks if the fingers have moved to an unexplored face of the object. If they do, a new surface plane is obtained which is then intersected with the current object model. The acquired object model can be used for manipulating the object with the hand. Experimental results using a four fingered hand are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. This method enables a multifingered hand to manipulate various objects of unknown shapes.