2007 Articles

Soft Finger Model with Adaptive Contact Geometry for Grasping and Manipulation Tasks

Allen, Peter K.; Lackner, Claire; Ciocarlie, Matei

This paper presents a method for building analytical contact models for soft fingers. Friction constraints are derived based on general expressions for non-planar contacts of elastic bodies, taking into account the local geometry and structure of the objects in contact. These constraints are then formulated as a linear complementarity problem, the solution of which provides the normal and frictional forces applied at each contact, as well as the relative velocity of the bodies involved. This approach captures frictional effects such as coupling between tangential force and frictional torque. We illustrate this method by analyzing manipulation tasks performed by an anthropomorphic robotic hand equipped with soft fingerpads.