GraspIt!: A Versatile Simulator for Robotic Grasping

Andrew Miller

Centre for Autonomous Systems
KTH Stockholm, Schweden

Donnerstag, 07.02.2002, 17 Uhr c.t., H 12
This talk presents a grasping simulator that can aid both robotic hand designers and those planning grasping tasks. It provides a user with an interactive environment where he or she can manipulate the degrees of freedom of any given hand model to form grasps. As contact between the links of the hand and an object occur, the simulator analyzes the new grasp on the fly and provides the user with instant feedback concerning the quality of the grasp. This information includes not only numerical quality measures, but also an indication of the grasp's weak point as well as projections of the 6-dimen-sional space of forces and torques that can be applied by the grasp.

In addition to its visualization capabilities, the simulator has facilities for modeling a complete robotic work cell, which is necessary when planning an actual grasping task. When combined with a real-time, model-based vision system to align the pose of a simulated object with the pose of an actual object in the workspace, the simulator can be used to plan, execute, and monitor a complete grasping task. Exam-ples of this process are presented and serve to demonstrate this application of the simulator.

Recently, a multi-rigid body dynamics system has been implemented which further increases the realism of the simulation. With it, a user can examine the grasp formation process to ensure that a desired grasp can be achieved. In addition, it allows more complex hand control algorithms to be tested. Finally, future work involving tactile sensor simulation and automatic grasp selection will also be discussed.

sfb-logo Zur Startseite Erstellt von: Anke Weinberger (2002-02-04).
Wartung durch: Anke Weinberger (2002-02-04).