A Heuristic approach to automatic grasp planning for a 3-fingered hand

This paper presents the core of a software system able to determine a good grasp configuration on 3D objects for a three-fingered hand. The grasp planning problem has been studied considering both the constraints due to the stability and accessibility conditions, and the ones related to functionality. Physical, geometrical, spatial and task-related knowledge for solving the grasp planning problem have been properly modelled to support a heuristic-based reasoning process. A series of heuristic rules and geometric tests are used to scan the solution space, searching for a good grasp. In fact, when considering the three-dimensional case, a purely analytical and exhaustive approach appears too complex because of the dimension of the search space. This approach results in an incremental and modular model of grasp reasoning, that has been implemented using the Flex expert system shell. This work has been developed and demonstrated within the Esprit 2 project CIM-PLATO No. 2202.