Gain-Tuning of Sensory Feedback for a Multi-Fingered Hand Based on Muscle Physiology

This paper discusses dynamic characteristics of motion of a pair of multi-degrees of freedom robot fingers executing grasp of a rigid object and controlling its orientation with the aid of rolling contacts. In particular, the discussions are focused on a problem of gain-tuning of sensory feedback signals proposed from the viewpoint of sensorymotor coordination, which consist of a feedforward term, a feedback term for controlling rotational moment of the object, and another term for controlling its rotational angle. It is found through computer simulations of the overall fingersobject dynamics subject to rolling contact constraints that some dynamic characteristics of torque-angular velocity relation may play an important role likely as reported by experimental results in muscle physiology and therefore selection of damping gains in angular velocity feedback depending on the guess of object mass is crucial. Finally, a guidance of gain-tuning in each feedback term is suggested and its validity is discussed by various computer simulations.