TOWARD A FORMULATION OF THE HUMAN GRASPING QUALITY SENSE

This article examines the grasping quality problem and suggests a form ulation that can capture the major mechanisms that generate the human grasping quality sense. Here, the quality of a grasp is examined from the gripper, object, and grasping-configuration perspectives. These pe rspectives are incorporated into the formulation by selecting an appro priate objective function that is minimized subject to constraints tha t represent the geometry, friction, and force-balance conditions of a grasp. The quality of a grasp is depicted as a polar plot that demonst rates the dependency of grasping quality on the external-loading direc tion. The suggested grasping quality measures possess characteristics that are in agreement with basic human intuition. In particular this a rticle proves that the three proposed quality measures are improved wh en the number of contact points is increased. In summary, the suggeste d grasping quality formulation captures some of the physical mechanism s that characterize a human grasp, and therefore it may lead to a powe rful mathematical model of the human grasping quality sense. (C) 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.