Title: Natural hand posture determination using control-oriented inter-finger coordination kinematic models

Authors: Nina Robson; Jong-Seob Won

Addresses: California State University, Fullerton, California, USA ' Jeonju University, Jeonju, South Korea

Abstract: The paper builds up on a recently developed planar control-oriented finger kinematic model for natural grasping, based on thumb-long finger(s) anthropometric data. In the model, the posture is determined by the time-dependent radius R of a virtual cylinder encompassed by the fingers. After the experimental evaluation of the model, the results are combined with circle configuration techniques based on the Pedoe maps, to explore the relation between the fingertip-object curvature within the contact and the configuration parameter R for precision grasping. Within the proposed contact geometry setup the fingertip and object curvatures are represented by circles with different radii. The type of interaction is described by defining a configuration matrix. Six fingertip grasping configurations are considered, each of which is constructed from five available circles: two for the fingertips, one virtual circle, and two at the fingertip-object contact points. The results from the case study show that it is possible to calculate the configuration control parameter R based on the choice of any four circles. The preliminary results could further benefit the field of postural synergies and object manipulation, and open the door to the definition of novel kinematic tasks and future combined design-control strategies.

Keywords: human motion; Pedoe maps; contact and curvature kinematic constraints.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMRS.2023.129423

International Journal of Mechanisms and Robotic Systems, 2023 Vol.5 No.3, pp.202 - 222

Received: 11 May 2021
Accepted: 09 Sep 2021
Published online: 09 Mar 2023 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article