Finger force computation for manipulation of an object by a multifingered robot hand

The authors present an efficient computational procedure to determine the finger force of a three-fingered robot hand in object manipulation. They first define initial grasping force as the force needed to hold a massless object. Then grasping force and contact normal during manipulation are determined from initial grasping force and initial contact normal by tracking the object displacement. Manipulation force, the finger force required to manipulate an object and to compensate for object weight, is computed by the generalized matrix inverse method. Optimal internal force, when necessary, is determined from the grasping force during manipulation without explicitly solving the optimization problem. The computational burden for determining finger force is less than that of previous methods