3D multifingered caging: Basic formulation and planning

In this paper, three-dimensional caging by a multifingered hand (3D multifingered caging) is studied. Caging is a method of object constraining in which robot bodies surround an object and make it inescapable from the ldquocagerdquo composed of the robot bodies. In 3D multifingered caging, position-controlled robot hands can constrain objects and transport them, and force control is not necessary. Furthermore, even a robot hand with low degrees of freedom can constrain an object to manipulate. We show some examples of 3D multifingered caging. Then, we derive sufficient conditions for caging objects, and propose a method to plan configurations of a robot hand for caging with the sufficient conditions.