A discrete-event systems approach to modeling dextrous manipulation

To perform dextrous manipulation e ciently, it is necessary to coordinate the interactions of many component processes. This paper investigates one approach to coordination: discrete-event systems. The applicability of discrete-event systems to the modeling of dextrous manipulation tasks is studied. Discrete-event control theory o ers formal methods for determining whether a coordinator of the components can be generated. A representative dextrous manipulation task, the planar Grasp-Lift-Replace task of Howe and Cutkosky, is presented as a discrete-event process. The task is extended to include twongered exploratory procedures. The e ectiveness of the discrete-event system approach is illustrated through simulations of several test cases.