Knowledge-based prehension: capturing human dexterity

A major question facing the development of sophisticated robotics systems is how to capture the functionality seen in versatile living systems. An approach that has proven useful in designing complex systems is to capture the explicit constraints in a knowledge based system. A knowledge-based planning system under development is reported which attempts to capture the versatility of human prehension. The goal is to model the relationship between perceptual and motor systems in human prehension as well as to develop a knowledge-based grasp planner able to control sophisticated, dextrous robot hands