Redundancy and fault-tolerance in grasping and manipulation by multifingered hands

Abstract

This paper treats grasping and manipulation of objects by articulated, multifingered hands. We discuss how to use redundancy to improve the performance of hand-object systems and compensate for potential task failures. We analyze the kinematics for manipulation. Definitions of redundancy based on a minimum-case measure are presented and an optimization method for redundancy control is proposed. Strategies for optimal fault-tolerant control are introduced to accomplish tasks using finger reconfiguration and joint torque redistribution.