A Fuzzy Model for Multifingered Robot Prehension

This paper first describes a fuzzy model for multifingered robot grasp planning. This is an extension of a previously developed model of hand configurations (i.e. shapes, postures, etc.) that consists of a hierarchy of topological and geometrical representations. The top level is a topological point-set representation bounded by four terminal postures of the hand, and is labeled as a topological tetrahedron space of hand configurations. These configurations are described and specified by a collection of properties that are incomplete and imprecise. These collection of properties specify fuzzy points describing the fuzzy vertices of the topological tetrahedron. The edges (bounded by fuzzy end-points) are called fuzzy edges and the faces (bounded by fuzzy vertices and fuzzy edges) are called fuzzy faces of the tetrahedron. These topological elements are considered as sources of fuzziness inherent from the modeling scheme, in addition to other sources of fuzziness such as (i) those attributed to objects: recognition, representation, location and orientation, and (ii) those attributed to dextrous grasp planning procedures and to the representions of actions to be performed by a multifingered robot hand. From this basis, a fuzzy algorithm for the determination of dextrous grasps is outlined.