Robot hands and the mechanics of manipulation (T. Mason and J.K. Salisbury, Jr. (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T., 1985) [Book Reviews]

The book must be considered, in the opinion of this reviewer, to be an advanced text in robotics. It requires the reader to have at least one of the following four backgrounds: 1) a certain amount of maturity in the subject material; 2) practical experience in robotics; 3) thorough knowledge in the subject of mechanics; or 4) very high levels of motivation. As stated above, it has the right balance of abstraction and practice and should appeal to a large spectrum of readers. Several realistic design assumptions, i.e., negligible inertial and Coriolis forces in comparison with contact and friction forces, small velocities, and no impact, have substantially simplified the analysis, dynamics, and control issues. This emphasis on quasi-static analysis is implied in the first section of the book and succinctly stated in the second section. In summary, this book is a well-written and comprehensive expose of the state of the art in quasi-static robotics applied to the analysis and design of manipulators and hands. As the authors state, there are numerous challenging problems that remain. More precise modeling of interaction of solid objects, where velocities and accelerations are not neglected, control of the nature of the forces of contact, purely nonholonomic constraints, redundancies in sensors, inputs, and states, design with unisense actuators, and a plethora of nonlinear estimation and identification problems are just a few that come to mind.