PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTION OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS
Abstract:
A procedure for inverse kinetic analysis on two hard fingers grasping a hard sphere is proposed in this study. Contact forces may be found for given linear and angular accelerations of a spherical body. Elastic force-displacement relations predicted by Hertz contact theory are used to remove the indeterminancy produced by rigid body modelling. Two types of inverse kinetic analysis may be dealt with. Firstly, as the fingers impose a given tightening displacement on the body, and carry it to move with known accelerations, corresponding grasping forces may be determined by a numerical procedure. In this procedure one contact force may be chosen as the principal unknown, and all other contact forces are expressed in terms of this force. The numerical procedure is hence very efficient since it deals with a problem with only one unknown. The solution procedure eliminates slipping thus only nonslip solutions, if they exist, are found. Secondly, when the body is moving with known accelerations, if the grasping direction of the two fingers is also known, then the minimum tightening displacement required for non-sliding grasping may be obtained in closed form. In short, the proposed technique deals with a grasping system that has accelerations, and in this study the authors show that indeterminancy may be used to reduce the complexity of the problem.
