HEAP: a sensory driven distributed manipulation system

Dextrous hands used in robotic systems require equally dextrous control architectures in order to perform the complex tasks that the hands were built for. Even with its multitude of degrees of freedom, the hand must closely interact with the arm on which it is mounted. Coordination with the arm takes place at the planning level, where desired motions for the hand and arm are synchronised. At the reflexive level, more dynamic interactions between the hand and arm are required, such that the arm is capable of using the force information from the hand, to modify its own trajectory. This coupling between mechanisms is not restricted to hands and arm, and a multilayered control architecture is needed so that the actions of various mechanisms and active sensors are coordinated.<>