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Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 1886 – 1895

12th GLOBAL CONGRESS ON MANUFACTURING AND MANAGEMENT, GCMM 2014

Matlab Toolbox for Kinematic Analysis and Simulation of

Dexterous Robotic Grippers
Swaraj Zodeya,*, Sharad K. Pradhanb
a
M.E. Student, Mechanical Engg. Department, NITTTR Bhopal-462002, INDIA
b
Associate Professor and Head, Mechanical Engg. Department, NITTTR Bhopal-46200 2, INDIA

Abstract

Robot simulators have supported the science of robotics for a long period and have been an indispensable tool for understanding,
planning, designing and programming of educational and industrial robots. These soft tools allows the users to program and test
their applications without using the real hardware or even building it since such tools allow the analysis of behaviours and
performance beforehand. Some of these soft tools have already been designed and developed for professional as well as
educational and research purposes by researchers. However, the majority of these tools are specifically designed for serial
manipulators and simulation tools for robotic grasping is rather limited e.g Graspit!, OpenGRASP, SynGrasp, and hence there is
a need to develop a general purpose software package for performing different analyses on dexterous robotic hands.
In this research work, a new MATLAB based dexterous robotic gripper toolbox is developed with GUI based simulating
environment for Kinematic analysis and additional features with inbuilt library of various dexterous grippers of Robot. This
toolbox has capabilities like Hand modeling, Grasp definition, Grasp modeling, Grasp analysis and Graphics to support
representation of various commercially available existing dexterous grippers and has provision and flexibility to accommodate
any newly developed hand. The library of toolbox has different parameters like Denavit - Hartenberg parameters, finger size, and
joint angles etc. which are used for kinematics of various dexterous grippers. Form closure analysis is a special feature that has
been included for understanding the actual positioning and orientation of fingers of dexterous grippers according to the object
position. The library of proposed toolbox has detailed definition of objects to make form closure by various models of dexterous
grippers.
© 2014Published
©2014 The Authors. Published
by Elsevier byisElsevier
Ltd. This Ltd. article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
an open access
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of GCMM 2014.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of GCMM 2014
Keywords: Matlab robotic gripper toolbox, Dexterous grippers, Grasp planning, Kinematic analysis, Grasp simulation

1. Introduction

Kinematic structure, real-time motion control and axis drive mechanism design helps into focus on major
manipulation performance characteristics like reach and dexterity, quickness, payload, and precision. Reach explains

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 9425080212

E-mail address: [email protected]

1877-7058 © 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of GCMM 2014
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2014.12.342
 Swaraj Zodey and Sharad K. Pradhan / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 1886 – 1895 1887

the motion of the robot links in the space and dexterity indicates the angular displacement of a joint. reach and
dexterity of the robot are decided by the three axes of the arm. Robot simulators have supported the science of
robotics for a long period and have been an indispensable tool for understanding, planning, designing and
programming of educational and industrial robots. These soft tools allows the users to program and test their
applications without using the real hardware or even building it since such tools allow the analysis of behaviours and
performance beforehand. In robotics research, simulators have an important role in the development and
demonstration of algorithms and techniques in areas such as path planning, grasp planning, mobile robot navigation
and others. There are many benefits of using theses soft tools such as they facilitate testing and tuning of conceptual
mechanisms under varying user defined conditions and constraints. Second, they avoid use and wear of expensive
and complex robotic structures. Finally they are cheaper than the real
robots and manipulators. Some of these soft tools have already been designed and developed for professional as well
as educational and research purposes by researchers. However, the majority of these tools are specifically designed
for a particular application however some are successful attempts to develop general purpose robot software
packages. Some are independent software while others are plugin types. The primary contribution of these software
packages is the automation and simplification of the robot modeling process which is important for correct robot
design and control. In addition, the easy to use GUI and simplified models allow rapid prototyping and simulation of
robots and control design/validation. These soft tools allow user to easily create and manipulate data type
fundamental to robotics such as Denavit and Hartenberg parameters, homogeneous transformations, quaternions and
trajectories which are necessary to represent 3D position and orientations. Functions available in these soft tools
include forward and inverse kinematics and forward and inverse dynamics. These tools are based on general method
of representing the kinematics and dynamics of serial link manipulator. However, the majority of these tools are
specifically designed for serial manipulators and simulation tools for robotic grasping is rather limited e.g
OpenGRASP[1], Graspit![2,3], SynGrasp[4], and hence there is a need to develop a general purpose software
package for performing different analyses on dexterous robotic hands.

1.1. OpenGrasp

It is a modular architecture based toolkit for simulation of grasping and dexterous manipulation. The user can
generate and also shifts the models developed. This toolkit is upgrade or improved version of OpenRAVE [1]. This
is enhanced by the Robot Editor, adopting the COLLADA file format, and Physical Abstraction Layer for flexibility
and standardisation. OpenRAVE designed for the autonomous robot applications and having three layers i.e. a core,
a plugins layer for interfacing to other libraries and scripting interfaces for easier access to functions. The key
aspects of robot editor are geometric modeling, semantic modeling, dynamic modeling, and conversion formats. The
significant application of OpenGRASP is planning and grasping, it is based on Medial axis of object and to reduce
candidate grasp search space. The robot editor generates different models like SAH hand, SDH hand, Barrett hand,
Kuka KR5 sixx R850 arm, hand of Otto bock, Shadow hand, and humanoid robot ARMAR-III.

1.2. Graspit!

It is an ideal environment for grasp analysis and planning, and it can serve as a test bed for new grasp evaluation,
grasp synthesis, and manipulation planning algorithms. It is possible to test these algorithms much more quickly and
for more hand designs than would be possible in the lab using an actual robot. Ultimately, the planning for an actual
grasping task can be performed in simulation and then carried out on a physical system. It is a simulator which will
accommodate arbitrary hand and robot designs. It can also load objects and obstacles of arbitrary geometry to
populate an entire simulation world. The ‘GraspIt!’ [2] engine includes rapid collision detection and contact
determination system that permits a user to interactively manipulate a robot or an object and make contacts between
them. Once a grasp is formed, one of the key features of the simulator is the set of grasp quality matrix. Each grasp
is evaluated with numeric quality measures, and visualization methods enable the user to check the weak point of
the grasp and make arbitrary 3D projections of the 6D grasp wrench space.
‘GraspIt!’ [3] have features like 3D user interface permitting the user to check and interact with a virtual world
containing robots, objects and obstacles. It also consist of dynamics engine, grasp planning, facilities, computation
1888 Swaraj Zodey and Sharad K. Pradhan / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 1886 – 1895

of numerical grasp quality matrices and visualization methods for the Grasp Wrench Space, support for Soft Finger
Contacts, support for low-dimensional hand posture subspaces, a library of robotic hand models for interaction with
hardware and sensors, like a Barrett hand, Flock of Birds tracker and Cyberglove, a flexible robot definition that
makes it possible to import new robot designs, a fast collision detection and contact determination. System and a
simple trajectory generator and control algorithms that compute the joint forces are necessary to follow the
trajectory.

1.3. Syngrasp

Syngrasp [4] is an independent robotic toolbox developed for analysis of grasping of human hand as well as
robotic hands. It gives a graphical representation of models of hand an anthropomorphic hand, a 3-fingered hand, a
modular hand and the DLR/HIT II Hand. This toolbox has capabilities like hand modeling, Grasp modeling, Grasp
analysis and Graphics to support representation of Manipulator and objects of arbitrary shapes. The tool is designed
to integrate in the hand model a kinematic coupling between joints, as those provided in the synergistic organization
of human hand or due to the mechanical or control constraints realized on the robotic hands. The toolbox functions
were developed to allow a simple and intuitive analysis of the main grasp properties, e.g. controllable force and
motion, manipulability, grasp quality measures.

2. Various robotic analyses

The steps involved in performing analysis include:

1. Representing 3D translation and Orientation
2. Kinematics
3. Trajectories
4. Dynamics
5. Grasp Planning and Grasp Analysis
6. Advanced features like Remote operation support, Augmented reality features, Collision detection
7. Simulation

3. New Toolbox development framework

A MATLAB based Toolbox viz. ‘DXGToolbox’ has been developed in this research work to perform grasp
related analyses. The steps followed in the development are shown in figure 1.

Fig. 1 Flow chart of steps utilized for developing DXGToolbox

DXGToolbox comprises of 6 modules viz. DXGToolbox Functions, User Hand Definition, Existing Grippers
Model, Object Definition, Grasp Quality Measure and Grasp Modeling Window. All these modules are labeled and
depicted in figure 2 while the connectivity and hierarchy is depicted through a flow chart shown in figure 3.
 Swaraj Zodey and Sharad K. Pradhan / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 1886 – 1895 1889

Fig.2 Six Modules of DXGToolbox

Fig. 3 Flow chart of module of DXGToolbox GUI

3.1. Module 1: DXGToolbox Functions

A visible popup menu available in Module 1 the ‘DXGToolbox Functions’ has an instruction ‘Select
DXGToolbox Function’. On clicking this, two options appear on the screen i.e:
‚ User Hand Definition
‚ Existing Grippers Model
Through this popup module, the user can access ‘User Hand Definition’ (Module 2) option and ‘Existing Grippers
Model’ (Module 2) option, which are explained in next section.
1890 Swaraj Zodey and Sharad K. Pradhan / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 1886 – 1895

3.2. Module 2: User Hand Definition

User has a choice to decide about different hand elements like number of fingers, links length and palm shapes. All
the sizes are in millimetre. User can select the palm shapes as listed below:
1. Circle
2. Rectangle, and
3. Trapezium

After selecting the palm, user can select maximum number of five fingers made up of maximum of three links.
According to the requirement, user can feed number of fingers and the corresponding link sizes. It is not necessary
to fill in all the cells. There are other options in the module, like hand position and its orientation. The position and
rotation details can be feed in millimeter from the grid origin (0, 0, 0) and in radian from 0 to 1 respectively. On
clicking the display user hand, the model of user hand will get displayed on the GUI window (Module 6). The
button ‘Reset Model’ orients back to default Module 2.

3.3. Module 3: Existing Grippers Model

In this fragment of toolbox, data related to nine models of existing industrial dexterous grippers is available (as
given in table 1). These nine hands are Barrett hand [5-7], Paradigmatic hand [8,9], Modular hand [10], DLR 2 hand
[11,12], GIFU hand3 [13,14], KH hand S1[15,16], Shadow hand [17,18], HIRO hand 3 [19,20], NTU hand [21,22].
The number of fingers and link lengths information are also displayed on the screen as per the details provided in
table 2. User can select a particular hand by clicking default instruction ‘Choose Hand’. By clicking ‘Display Hand’
button, the equivalent hand model gets displayed in the GUI window of Module 6. There are other options available
for positioning and orientation of selected gripper with respect to X-Y-Z axes. The but-ton ‘Reset Hand’ brings back
to the default Module 3. User can also define his own dexterous hand and perform all the stated analyses.

Table 1. Various shapes and configuration of industrial dexterous gripper and their equivalent in DXGToolbox

Actual Configuration Equivalent model used in

Hand
DXGToolbox

Barrett Hand [5-7]

Paradigmatic Hand
[8,9]

Modular Hand [10]

 Swaraj Zodey and Sharad K. Pradhan / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 1886 – 1895 1891

DLR 2 Hand [11,12]

GIFU Hand 3 [13,14]

KH Hand S1 [15,16]

Shadow Hand [17,18]

HIRO Hand 3 [19,20]

NTU Hand [21,22]

1892 Swaraj Zodey and Sharad K. Pradhan / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 1886 – 1895

Table 2. Dimensions for DH parameter of various industrial dexterous grippers considered

KH
Hand Barrett Paradigmatic Modular DLR 2 GIFU Shadow HIRO NTU
Hand
Models Hand Hand Hand Hand Hand 3 Hand Hand 3 Hand
S1
L1 50 25 38 55 70.5 62.5 38 13 35.2
Finger 1 L2 50 15 38 25 50 29 32 72 34
Link
size L3 - 10 31 25 36.5 29 27.5 45 34
L4 - - - - - - - - 42
L1 50 37 38 55 70.5 62.5 45 13 34
Finger 2
Link L2 50 30 38 25 32 29 25 72 34
size
L3 - 15 31 25 32.5 29 26 45 42
L1 50 40 38 55 70.5 62.5 45 13 34
Finger 3
Link L2 50 35 38 25 32 29 25 72 34
size
L3 - 17 31 25 32.5 29 26 45 42
L1 - 37 - 55 70.5 62.5 45 13 34
Finger 4
Link L2 - 30 - 25 32 29 25 72 34
size
L3 - 15 - 25 32.5 29 26 45 42
L1 - 27 - 55 70.5 62.5 45 13 34
Finger 5
Link L2 - 25 - 25 32 29 25 72 34
size
L3 - 10 - 25 32.5 29 26 45 42

3.4. Module 4: Object Definition

This module appears after the completion of Module 2 and 3.This module defines the object according to its size,
position and orientation. Popup menu shows a default instruction ‘Select Grasp Object Shape’, and six different
objects appear in the list. On selecting one of the mentioned shapes, the corresponding variable/s appears on the
screen. The six selected standard shapes along with their function file names are given in table 3.

Table 3. Functions files of DXGToolbox for various shapes

Shape Function files in DXGToolbox
Sphere DXGobjsph
Cube DXGobjcube
Cylinder DXGobjcyl
Slab DXGobjslab
Plate DXGobjplate
Cuboid DXGobjcboid

A user friendly option provided for deciding the shape as per table 3. This provides option to feed the numerical
values for variables and decides both the position as well as orientation of the object. On clicking the button
‘Display Object’, the object will appear on the GUI window with already selected hand. If, in case, object and hand
are in the specified position or not acquiring the common space points, then a message box ‘Cannot place the object
in desired position’ would appear.

3.5. Module 5: Grasp Quality

This is the most vital module of the toolbox. Here the grasp quality measures are calculated for finding the grasp
relation between the hand and the grasp object. There are six different quality measures that are taken in account in
this toolbox. The grasp quality measures utilized in this toolbox are specified in table 4.
 Swaraj Zodey and Sharad K. Pradhan / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 1886 – 1895 1893

Table 4. Various Grasp quality measures used in DXGToolbox

Grasp Quality Measure Formulae Used Function and its programming
Minimum singular value of G Q = σmin(G) DXGmsingularvg(G)
SminG = sqrt(eigs(G*(G'),1,'sm'));
Grasp isotropy index Q= DXGgii (G)
SmaxG=sqrt(eigs(G*(G'),1,'lm'));
SminG = sqrt(eigs(G*(G'),1,'sm'));
Ii=SminG/SmaxG;
Distance to singular configurations Q= DXGdsconfig(G,J)
Gc=G'*inv(G*G');
HO=Gc'*J;
SminHO=sqrt(eigs(HO*(HO'),1,'sm'));
Volume of the manipulability ellipsoid Q= DXGmanipEllipsoidVolume(G,J)
Gc=G'*inv(G*G');
HO=Gc'*J;
VSHO=sqrt(eig(HO*(HO')));
VE=VSHO(1)*VSHO(2)*VSHO(3)*VSHO(4)*VSHO(5)*VSHO(6);
VE=sqrt(det(HO*(HO')));
Uniformity of transformation Q= DXGuot(G,J)
Gc=G'*inv(G*G');
HO=Gc'*J;
SmaxHO=sqrt(eigs(HO*(HO'),1,'lm'));
SminHO=sqrt(eigs(HO*(HO'),1,'sm'));
Ut=SmaxHO/SminHO;
Volume of the ellipsoid in the wrench Q = k DXGVolellwenchspace(G)
space VGHO=sqrt(eig(G*(G')));
VE=VGHO(1)*VGHO(2)*VGHO(3)*VGHO(4)*VGHO(5)*VGHO(6);
VE=sqrt(det(G*(G')));

3.6. Module 6: Grasp Modeling Window

The module provides a MATLAB based GUI window for analyzing the mathematics related to grasp quality. This
also gives a detailed view of object grasped by the hand. Module 2 and Module 3 generate the hand model, while
Module 4 provides grasp object model. Toolbox performs all operations in a sequential manner. Module 6 provides
an interactive view of hand and object view.

4. Results and Conclusion

In this work a MATLAB based tool box has been developed that can perform various analyses related to grasp
modeling, grasp planning and grasp quality evaluation using a single platform as depicted by a flowchart in figure 1.
In this toolbox nine different industrial dexterous hands are included and grasping is performed using six different
standard objects. The tool box performs activity listed in table 5 along with their MATLAB files and functions. A
GUI based environment facilitates the user to use all the modules of the software in a sequential manner to analyze
any grasp related task. The toolbox utilizes six grasp quality measures as listed in table 6. User can also have facility
to define his own dexterous hand model and perform all sorts of stated analyses.
Table 5. List of files & functions used in DXGToolbox for a specific activity
Modeling of all dexterous gripper or DXGhandBarrett DXGhandKHS1
hands DXGhandparadig DXGhandshadow
DXGhandmodular DXGhandHIRO3
DXGhandDLR2 DXGhandNTU
DXGhandGIFU3 DXGhandnew
Define elements of dexterous DXGdevfin DXGjoint
gripper/hand DXGdevhand DXGhanddisplace
DXGfingerchk DXGhandchk
DXGcontip DXGcrehand
DXGmatDH DXGcrelink
DXGxaxrot DXGcrepalm
DXGyaxrot DXGcolorfreeze
1894 Swaraj Zodey and Sharad K. Pradhan / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 1886 – 1895

DXGzaxrot
Modeling of all objects DXGobjsph DXGobjcboid
DXGobjcube DXGfincon
DXGobjcyl DXGhomtran
DXGobjslab DXGlinkseg
DXGobjplate
Define the face, surface points, vertices of DXGinterlink DXGfacecyl
object DXGsechk DXGfaceslab
DXGseconsph DXGfaceplate
DXGfacecube DXGfacecboid
Define the interface between hand and DXGindcube DXGpobjcyl
object for grasp planning DXGpsolidobj DXGpobjslab
DXGindslab DXGpobjplate
DXGindplate DXGpobjcboid
DXGindcboid DXGdobjsph
DXGpobjcube DXGdobjcyl
Define the grasp quality measures DXGmsingularvg DXGmanipEllipsoidVolume
DXGgii DXGuot
DXGdsconfig DXGVolellwenchspace
Include hand and object in grasp quality DXGplangrp DXGdevobj
measures DXGpointcloudgen DXGmatsel
DXGinitialpointhand DXG3dpointplane
DXGgrphand DXGhselmat
DXGhandcontact DXG3dvetnor
DXGjacmat DXGmatgrp
DXGmatskew DXGredind
DXGobjcontactpoint DXGmatgtilde
DXGdetectface DXGsortgrpplan

Table 6. List of Grasp quality measures and their outputs

Grasp Quality Measure GUI window display
Minimum singular value of G

Grasp isotropy index

Distance to singular configurations

Volume of the manipulability ellipsoid

Uniformity of transformation
 Swaraj Zodey and Sharad K. Pradhan / Procedia Engineering 97 (2014) 1886 – 1895 1895

Volume of the ellipsoid in the wrench space

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