Optimal Control of Robotic Grasping

A control technique for the control of contact forces between the links of a multiple-chain robot system (such as a robot hand) and an object is presented. The goal of the control method is to optimize contact forces so as to minimize a cost function, corresponding to minimization of a weighted sum of factors such as energy consumption and sensitivity to force disturbances. A globally stable algorithm is provided, that asymptotically converges to the optimum.