A global planner for in-hand dextrous re-configuration of rigid objects

This paper describes a global motion planner for dextrous manipulation of t hree-dimensional objects by a multi-fingered robotic hand. We focus on the so-called re-configuration problem: find a feasible quasi-static trajectory (motions and contact forces) that moves a hand - object system from an ini tial grasp to a final desired configuration of the object. The planner is d esigned as a multi-level process: a global level that expands a tree of sub -goals in the configuration space of the object. and a local level that sta rches for feasible quasi-static trajectories of the entire manipulation sys tem between adjacent sub-goals. A key feature of the planner is that it exp loits the redundancy of the system by using, in a complementary way, differ ent canonical manipulation modes and tackles the high dimensionality of the solution space (configuration and control spaces) by making use: instantan eously, of a random search over it. The planner is applied in simulation fo r achieving several non-trivial re-configuration tasks for (piecewise-) smo oth convex objects demonstrating the promise of our approach.