Robustness of power grasp with human skin characteristics

Abstract

Human skin has anisotropic elasticity. In this paper, we reveal that robustness of power grasp is improved by assuming human-skin-like anisotropic elasticity of fingers. First, we briefly introduce a conventional method to derive contact forces considering compliant contacts between an object and robot fingers, which has been proposed in Bicchi, A (1993). Then, we model human skin characteristic with anisotropic elasticity and propose an algorithm based on a linear programming method to measure robustness of a given power grasp model with a multiflngered hand with human-skin-like anisotropic elasticity. Finally, calculation of a stability region for a planar power grasp model shows that the robustness of the power grasp is improved by assuming human-skin-like anisotropic elasticity at contact points. © 2005 IEEE.