An experimental study of hierarchical control laws for grasping and manipulation using a two-fingered planar hand

Compares the performance of hierarchical and single-level controllers in a grasping context, and concludes that for rapid, planar grasping motions of heavy objects the performance of a hierarchical control structure is superior to that of the two single-level controllers tested. Although the theory discussed applies to grasping problems of arbitrary complexity, the focus is on planar, two-fingered grasping for the sake of clarity and to simplify implementation and experimental testing of the proposed control algorithms. The control algorithms have been implemented on a multifingered hand