Issues in Dextrous Manipulation

Excerpt from Issues in Dextrous Manipulation

Dextrous Manipulation means handling objects skillfully and adroitly and involves operating manipulators with actively powered fingers. We would like to think of a robot as a machine which can be instructed to perform at least any task which a human can, at least as well as a human; however, the current state of robotics research is far from this goal. At this point, although there exist reasonably accurate mechanical manipulators, we do not know how to use them effectively, and therefore they are useful only in simple application domains, such as welding and spray painting. A dextrous hand is one with multiple articulated fingers (i.e. Fingers with two or more powered joints), each of which is an open kinematic chain, and possibly a palmar surface. It contains a large number of degrees of freedom, and can achieve fine resolution with high accuracy and at high speeds. Each of the fingers should contain position and force sensors and may additionally contain tactile sensors.