Heuristic vision-based computation of planar antipodal grasps on unknown objects

A key issue in robotics is the development of the ability to grasp unknown objects. This ability requires a grasp determination mechanism that, based on the analysis of the description of the object, determines how it can be stably grasped. In this paper, a grasp determination method is presented that computes a set of grasps that comply with the force-closure condition. Its input is a set of contours, extracted from the vision data, describing the shape of the object. The internal holes of the object are taken into account, so the algorithm can find grasps on them. The algorithm also finds expansion and squeezing grasps, which are executed by opening and closing the gripper fingers.