Position/Stiffness-based Manipulation by Multifingered Hand.

Abstract

A position/stiffness-based manipulation control for a multifingered robot hand is proposed. In the proposed method, an object is manipulated by controlling each fingertip trajectory according to the desired trajectory for a manipulated object. Furthermore, the stiffness/damping control is also introduced at each fingertip to achieve the stability and the desired dynamics of the manipulation. Compared with the conventional force-based manipulation, the proposed control method is rather simple in algorithm, and without changing control modes, also enables to make finger motion task plans in constraint and unconstraint environments, since it is based on the position control.The fundamental formulation of proposed control method is described precisely and the dynamics of manipulation is analytically investigated. These considerations are experimentally confirmed on two-dimensional manipulation using a two-fingered robot hand with the stiffness control capability.