Fast grasp planning by using cord geometry to find grasping points

In this paper, we propose a novel idea to address the problem of fast computation of enveloping grasp configurations for a multi-fingered hand with 3D polygonal models represented as polygon soups. The proposed method performs a low-level shape matching by wrapping multiple cords around an object in order to quickly isolate promising grasping spots. From these spots, hand palm posture can be computed followed by a standard close-until-contact procedure to find the contact points. Along with the contacts information, the finger kinematics is then used to filter the unstable grasps. Through multiple simulated examples with a twelve degrees-of-freedom anthropomorphic hand, we demonstrate that our method can compute good grasps for objects with complex geometries in a short amount of time. Best of all, this is achieved without complex model preprocessing like segmentation by parts and medial axis extraction.