Takahiro Inoue, Shinichi Hirai Mechanics and Control of Soft-fingered Manipulation

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It is well known that the anatomy of our fingers, which consists of soft fingertips and hard fingernails, is well designed for grasping and manipulating objects. Mechanics and Control of Soft-fingered Manipulation introduces a new approach to the modeling of fingertips that have a soft pad and a hard back plate, similar to human fingers. Starting from the observation of soft-fingered grasping and manipulation, the book provides a parallel distributed model that takes into account tangential deformation of the fingertips. The model is supported with many experimental verifications and simulation results. Statics and dynamics in soft-fingered grasping and manipulation are also formulated based on this new model.Mechanics and Control of Soft-fingered Manipulation uniquely investigates how soft fingertips with hard back plates enhance dexterity in grasping and manipulation, theoretically and experimentally. This approach reveals the differences between soft-fingered and rigid-fingered manipulation. Researchers involved in object manipulation by robotic hands, as well as in human dexterity in object manipulation, will find this text enlightening.