Bio-inspired motion strategies for a bimanual manipulation task

We consider the complex task of coordinating two five-fingered anthropomorphic robot hands for taking a jar passed from a human user and unscrewing its cap. Using a pair of 7-DOF redundant arms for operating the hands, we study how the incorporation of human movement strategies at the finger and arm levels can aid in the solution of the overall bimanual task. At the finger level, we employ a finger control manifold for the unscrewing motion that has been synthesized with a kernel approach applied to human motion data captured with a data glove. At the arm level, we use a heuristic motivated from the observation of human arm movements to enhance the space of pass-over configurations that the system can successfully handle. In addition, we provide a brief description of the architecture of the overall system that comprises 54 motor degrees of freedom and integrates camera vision, arm and finger control as well as a speech output component for interaction with the human user.