Dexterous manipulation planning and execution of an enveloped slippery workpiece

When robotic hands or arms are capable of enveloping the workpieces that they manipulate, envelopment of the workpiece ensures grasp maintenance even if the object experiences significant external forces in directions unknown prior to grasp synthesis. The enveloping mechanism is useful in low-friction and microgravity environments. First-order stability cells are defined. They are used to plan a planar, whole-arm, manipulation task of a slippery workpiece. For most, but not all, of the plan, the workpiece is enveloped. Experimental results are presented