Segmentation Method for Manipulation Task Based on Measurement of Force Imposed by a Human Hand on an Object

This paper proposes a segmentation method of human manipulation task based on measurement of contact force imposed by a human hand on a grasped object. We define an index measure for segmenting a human manipulation task into primitives. The indices are calculated from the set of the contact forces measured at all the contact points during a manipulation task. Then, we apply the EM algorithm to the set of the indices in order to segment the manipulation task into primitives. These primitives are mapped onto the robotic hand to impose appropriate contact forces on a grasped object. In the experiments, manipulation tasks performed in daily human life have been successfully segmented.