CPG-based manipulation: generation of rhythmic finger gaits from human observation

A number of researches for the dexterous manipulation have been studied in robotics and physiologic fields independently. Multi-fingered manipulation for dexterous robot hands should be based on analysis of human skills. The purpose of this study is to apply CPG-based control to the dexterous manipulation. In this paper, CPG-based manipulation is proposed for the rotating manipulation of the dexterous hands. Finger manipulation patterns are investigated when a subject rotates a cylindrical object. Typical contact patterns during rotating manipulation are measured by FSRs. Based on the observation, the neural circuit model which generates a similar contact pattern is constructed. The experimental results by the computer simulation suggest that rotating manipulation can be performed using the constructed CPG model.