Grasping Operation Based on Functional Cooperation of Fingers

When we observe human grasping, some grasping operations consist of multiple cooperative primitive operations. Performing individual movements by different fingers in a grasping operation are generally called “partitioning of fingers.” Our interest is not in the individual movement of each finger, but in functional units of operations constituting entire grasping operations realized by fingers working together. We define such functional unit operation as a “primitive operation.” When one grasping operation consists of multiple cooperative primitive operations and fingers are used in different primitive operations, we call this “functional partitioning of fingers.” By assigning different primitive operations to functional partitioning of fingers, robot can realize various grasping operations. This paper shows that primitive operations can be described in software modules running in multifingered robot hand system, and demonstrates that various grasping operations are achieved by cooperation of primitive operations.