Kinematics and control of multifingered hands with rolling contact

The kinematics of rolling contact for two surfaces of arbitrary shape rolling of each other is derived. Applying these kinematic equations to two planar multifingered hands manipulating some object of arbitrary shape, a scheme is presented for the control of these hands which is a generalization of the computed torque method of control of robot manipulators. In implementing the control, it is required that all applied forces lie within the friction cone of the object so that sliding does not occur. The theory is illustrated with graphic simulations of the control law applied to the system dynamics for two examples