This paper presents a strategy meant to allow anthropomorphic robot hands to grasp objects of unknown shape in imitation of the human grasping reflex. A 10-month-old baby may bend his/her thumb and four fingers in an attempt to grasp an object when it comes in contact with the palm. After grasping it, if the object is attempted to be removed from the baby’s hand, the baby holds the object more ...

Given that studying neural bases of actions is very challenging with fMRI, numerous experiments have used pantomimed actions as a proxy to studying neural circuits of real actions. However, the underlying assumption that the same neural mechanisms mediate real and pantomimed actions has never been directly tested. Moreover, the assumption is called into question by neuropsychological evidence s...

Many research efforts have turned to sensing, and in particular computer vision, to create more flexible robotic systems. Computer vision is often required to provide data for the grasping of a target. Using a vision system for grasping of static or moving objects presents several issues with respect to sensing, control, and system configuration. This paper presents some of these issues in conc...

Introduction: There is a large amount of work in robotics that addresses hand-eye coordination ([1], [2]) and vision-based calculation of objects and of grasping pose, but autonomous grasping on Nao poses particular problems: We face rather limited on-board processing power, inherent inaccuracies in repositioning due to the building quality of the robot, reduced stiffness of joints in case of c...

There are three main theories on how human grasping movements are controlled. Two of them state that grip aperture and the movement of the hand are controlled. They differ in whether the wrist or the thumb of the hand is controlled. We have proposed a third theory, which states that grasping is a combination of two goal-directed single-digit movements, each directed at a specific position on th...

It has been argued that grasping, manipulation, and speech are among the most fundamental human abilities unparalleled by animals [7]. The importance of manipulation and grasping is also evidenced by “the large fraction of the human motor cortex devoted to manipulation and the number and sensitivity of mechanoreceptors in our palms and fingertips” [57]. Starting from these observations it is un...

Robotic grasping of deformable objects is inherently different from that of rigid objects, and is an under-researched area. Difficulties arise not only from expensive deformable modeling, but also from the changing object geometry under grasping force. This dissertation studies strategies of grasping deformable objects using two robotic fingers. Discovering the inapplicability of the traditiona...