This paper addresses a method of satisfactorily controlling the grasp of objects. Emphasis is placed on achieving the desired stiffness of a grasped object as accurately as possible, especially when the fingers have redundant joints. A model describing the relation between stiffness and force is derived. Based upon this model, a hierarchical control scheme of the grasp stiffness, called decentralized object stiffness control (DOSC) is proposed. DOSC is composed of a fingertip stiffness synthesis (FSS) algorithm and orthogonal stiffness decomposition control (OSDC). Employing the proposed FSS always achieves the desired grasp stiffness by solving the constrained least square problem. The computed fingertip stiffness is achieved by OSDC. It offers a feasible way of controlling the fingertip stiffness as well as maintaining the stability of the finger configuration by modulating the joint stiffness. The developed control method is implemented on a two-fingered planar robot hand one finger of which has a redundant joint. The effectiveness of the control method is confirmed experimentally.

The purpose of this paper is in duplicate to present computer simulation results of concurrent grasp and object manipulation by a pair of three degrees of freedom (3-dof) robot fingers with rigid hemispherical finger-ends that induce rolling contacts with an object and propose a guidance of gain tuning. Although the existence of a class of sensory feedback signals that realize stable grasp and orientation control of the object concurrently has been shown theoretically, the problem of tuning of their feedback gains has not yet been solved. This paper proposes a guideline for tuning sensory feedback gains by deriving a relationship between the object mass and damping coefficients of finger motions through analyzing the overall fingers-object dynamics and taking into account the well-known force/velocity characteristics of human muscle in muscle physiology.

This paper is concerned with a stability theory of motion governed by Lagrange's equation for a pair of multi-degrees of freedom robot fingers with hemi-spherical finger ends grasping a rigid object under rolling contact constraints. When a pair of dual two d.o.f. fingers is used and motion of the overall fingers-object system is confined to a plane, it is shown that the total degree of freedom of the fingers-object system is redundant for realization of stable grasping though there arise four algebraic constraints. To resolve the redundancy problem without introducing any other extra and artificial performance index, a concept of stability of motion starting from a higher dimensional manifold to a lower-dimensional manifold, expressing a set of states of stable grasp with prescribed contact force, is introduced and thereby it is proved in a rigorous way that stable grasp in a dynamic sense is realized by a sensory feedback constructed by means of measurement data of finger joint angles and the rotational angle of the object. Further, it is shown that there exists an additional sensory feedback that realizes not only stable grasp but also orientation control of the object concurrently. Results of computer simulation based on Baumgarte's method are presented, which show the effectiveness of the proposed concept and analysis.