Automatic Generation of 2D Canonical Grasps

The concepts of canonical grasp and grasp transformation graph proposed in 10] are useful in grasp planning and dextrous manipulation. However, one critical element, namely the automatic generation of the canonical grasps, is required for the grasp transformation graph to be practical. In this paper, we present an algorithm to generate all canonical grasps in the planar case automatically. To this end, we consider a series of kinematic constraints due to hand and object geometry, which must be satissed for a grasp to be feasible. Once the technique for the kinematic feasibility analysis of a grasp is available, we can then readily construct a system to generate automatically all canonical grasps by rst enumerating possible contact conngurations and then evaluating their feasibility. A graphical simulation system is provided to illustrate the presented algorithm.