ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a multifingered hand manipulating an object and then show how the same formalism can be applied to other problems. It describes one possible way of structuring controllers which attempts to address some of the difficulties inherent in the control of constrained robot systems with many degrees of freedom. The chapter presents a set of primitive operations that allow a complex robot controller to be built up in a hierarchical fashion and discusses some of the issues involved in the resulting control structure. It includes some thoughts on organization of complex controllers motivated in part by the type of control mechanisms found in biological motor control systems. The chapter concentrates on the control aspects of multifingered robot hands and shows how to extend previous controllers to apply to grasping and other coordinated manipulation tasks. It discusses the dynamics and control of a set of robots performing a coordinated task.
