Performances of the central-axis approach in grasp analysis

In this paper, we consider a 3D grasping problem. In previous work, we presented the central-axis approach and proven its capability to analyze multifingered grasps. In the present paper, we extend our study by developing and analyzing modified force-closure algorithms, and giving rigorous theoretical demonstrations. Through numerical simulations, we show that the proposed approach is computationally efficient when comparing with the qualitative ray-shooting algorithm. The proposed quantitative force-closure test offers a good quality metric without computing the convex hull of the primitive contact wrenches in R⁶, which efficiently reduces the amount of computation. Several simulation examples showing the efficiency of the proposed approach are included in the paper.