On rolling contact motion by robotic fingers via prescribed performance control

Dexterity in robot hand object manipulation is irrevocably connected with achieving and maintaining rolling motion and contact at the fingertips. The problem of controlling a robotic fingertip for contact rolling is in this work addressed via the generation of a rolling motion trajectory and the application of a prescribed performance controller that can guarantee contact maintenance and a predefined fast convergence of the rolling tracking error to zero under any contact conditions. A simulation of a five degrees of freedom robot show excellent contact rolling performance even at cases of low friction while alternative controllers lead to contact sliding.