A simple approach for hand-arm coordination

When integrating a dexterous robot hand into a hand-arm system, one has to coordinate and control the usually redundant system while taking into account the special capabilities of the subsystems “hand” and “arm”. This paper presents a simple approach for hand-arm coordination in Cartesian space which subdivides the object motion into hand and arm portions using only a few easily interpretable parameters. Applying well-known stiffness control approaches for the hand and the arm respectively, the problem of controlling the subsystems appropriately (including force control) is solved. The results of experiments using a system with 15 degrees of freedom are shown and discussed