Friction Coefficients and Grasp Synthesis

We propose a new concept called friction sensitivity which measures how susceptible a specific grasp is to changes in the underlying friction coefficients. We develop algorithms for the synthesis of stable grasps with low friction sensitivity and for the synthesis of stable grasps in the case of small friction coefficients. We describe how grasps with low friction sensitivity can be used when a robot has an uncertain belief about friction coefficients and study the statistics of grasp quality under changes in those coefficients. We also provide a parametric estimate for the distribution of grasp qualities and friction sensitivities for a uniformly sampled set of grasps.