Optimal control of fingertip force during grasping operation by multifinger
ed robotic end effecters is an important consideration. Determination of op
timal fingertip force is, however, very complicated due to the involvement
of a number of contact parameters at the finger-object interface including
the mass of the object and the frictional properties of the contact surface
s. Modelling of various contact parameters is computationally overloading,
which may not be tenable in practical situations where objects of different
mass and material are available. Also for an unknown and unstructured envi
ronment, these properties may not be known in advance. This paper presents
a controller based on fuzzy logic which is capable of performing optimal gr
asp of objects without knowing their mass and frictional properties. The co
ntroller also accounts for stability and dynamic aspects of the grasp. The
experimental results of the implementation are presented.