In-hand dexterous manipulation of piecewise-smooth 3-D objects

We present an algorithm called finger tracking for in-hand manipulation of three-dimensional objects with independent robot fingers. We describe and a nalyze the differential control for finger tracking and extend it to on-lin e continuous control for a set of cooperating robot fingers. We show experi mental data from a simulation. Finally, we discuss global control issues fo r finger tracking, and compute lower bounds for reorientation by finger tra cking. Our algorithm is computationally efficient, exact, and takes into co nsideration the full dynamics of the system.