Planar, Bimanual, Whole-Arm Grasping

We address the problem of synthesizing planar, bimanual, whole-arm grasps by developing the abstraction of an open chain gripper, an open, planar chain of rigid links and revolute joints contacting a planar, polygonal object, and introducing the concept of a generalized contact. Since two generalized contacts suffice for planar grasps, we leverage previous work on caging and immobilization for two contact grasps to construct an algorithm which synthesizes contact configurations for stable grasping. Simulations show that our methodology can be applied to grasp a wide range of planar objects without relying on special-purpose end-effectors. Representative experiments with the PR2 humanoid robot illustrate that this approach is practical.