Intelligent re-location based manipulation of objects using robot hands. I. Extracting qualitative abstracts from quantitative concepts

The authors discuss the relevant qualitative modeling issues that need to be addressed while developing a framework suitable for intelligent dexterous manipulation of objects using a robot hand, based on common-sense reasoning. Relevant qualitative concepts are abstracted from the existing analytical model of a robot grasping situation and suitably aggregated according to their functional interrelationships. The concepts of qualitative vectors, qualitative reference frames, qualitative planes, qualitative forces and qualitative displacements are defined in the context of robot grasping and dexterous manipulation. An incremental change in the orientation of a grasped object is modeled using a qualitative rotational transformation