Appropriate Lengths between Phalanges of Multijointed Fingers for Stable Grasping

Book One

Volume

Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 3

Vision and Robotics

An appropriate arrangement of finger joints is very important in designing multijointed fingers since the stability of grasping an object greatly depends on that arrangement. Multijointed fingers can grasp an abject with many points of contact each of which is pressed against the object as if wrapping up that object. The amount of the wrapped up area and the form of the finger when an objected is grasped are and therefore important factors for determining the stability of the grasping. We propose the wrap-up rate to be used for the evaluation of the stability of grasping by using these factors. We consider twenty eight models for the finger having three joints, and perform a simulation of their ability to grasp various shapes stably. Based on the simulation results, an appropriate arrangement of lengths between phalanges for a multijointed finger is presented.