Dexterous manipulation planning using probabilistic roadmaps in continuous grasp subspaces

In this paper, we propose a new method for the motion planning problem of rigid object dexterous manipulation with a robotic multi-fingered hand, under quasi-static movement assumption. This method computes both object and finger trajectories as well as the finger relocation sequence. Its specificity is to use a special structuring of the research space that allows to search for paths directly in the particular subspace GS_n which is the subspace of all the grasps that can be achieved with n grasping fingers. The solving of the dexterous manipulation planning problem is based upon the exploration of this subspace. The proposed approach captures the connectivity of GS_n in a graph structure. The answer of the manipulation planning query is then given by searching a path in the computed graph. Simulation experiments were conducted for different dexterous manipulation task examples to validate the proposed method.