Influence of contact types and uncertainties in the computation of Independent Contact Regions

Independent Contact Regions provide robustness in front of finger positioning errors during an object grasping. However, different sources of uncertainty may be present like, for instance, the friction model used in grasp planning, indetermination of the friction coefficients, and errors in the model of the object that affect the positions of the boundary points as well as the direction normal to the object surface. These sources have not been previously considered in the computation of the Independent Contact Regions. This paper discusses how to take into account these factors when computing the Independent Contact Regions for discretized objects, i.e. objects described with a cloud or a mesh of points. The considerations provided allow a more robust result for application in grasp synthesis and regrasp planning.