Experiments on Dextrous Manipulation
without Prior Object Models

Olac Fuentes and Randal C. Nelson
Department of Computer Science
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY 14627

Abstract: In this paper we present a kinematic method for 6-degreee-of-freedom manipulation of rigid objects using a dextrous robotic hand. Our method requires no prior models of the objects being manipulated; instead it obtains all the information needed directly from the hand's sensors. Its low computational cost makes real-time performance easy to achieve. We present experimental results showing the implementation of our method using the Utah/MIT dextrous hand. We also show that adding a Cartesian controller significantly improves the accuracy of the manipulation