Independent Contact Regions based on a patch contact model

Abstract

The synthesis of multi-fingered grasps on nontrivial objects requires a realistic representation of the contact between the fingers of a robotic hand and an object. In this work, we use a patch contact model to approximate the contact between a rigid object and a deformable anthropomorphic finger. This contact model is utilized in the computation of Independent Contact Regions (ICRs) that have been proposed as a way to compensate for shortcomings in the finger positioning accuracy of robotic grasping devices. We extend the ICR algorithm to account for the patch contact model and show the benefits of this solution.