Adaptive grasping for a small humanoid robot utilizing force- and electric current sensors

The ability to grasp objects of different size and shape is one of the most important skills of a humanoid robot. Human grasping integrates a lot of different senses. In particular, the tactile sensing is very important for a stable grasping motion. When we lift a box without knowing what is inside, we do it carefully using our tactile and proprioceptive senses to estimate the weight and thus, the force necessary to hold and to lift this box. In this paper we present an adaptive controlling mechanism which enables a robot to grasp objects of different weights. Thereby, we only use the proprioceptive sensors like positions and electric current at the joints and force sensors at the end-effectors providing the robot with tactile feedback. We implemented and tested our approach on a humanoid robot.