Grasp planning by alignment of pairwise shape descriptorss

The majority of work related to grasp planning has centered on the understanding of what constitutes a good grasp. However, to reach a good grasp we must first find the relative position of the gripper, its approach vector, and finger configuration. This search problem is the focus of our paper. We propose an on-line method that uses pairwise shape descriptors to quickly find good alignments between the gripper contact surface and the target. Having found a good fit, we then evaluate how alignment quality relates to grasp quality and what can be done to speed up the exploration of the DOF space.