Grasp Synergies: Data Gathering and Analysis

Kurzfassung

This paper presents a methodology to accurately record human finger postures during grasping. The main contribution consists of a kinematic model of the human hand reconstructed via magnetic resonance imaging of one subject that (i) is fully parameterized and can be adapted to different subjects, and (ii) is amenable of in-vivo to joint angle recordings via optical tracking of markers attached to the skin. The principal novelty here is the introduction of a soft-tissue artifact compensation mechanism that can be optimally calibrated in a systematic way. The high-quality data gathered are employed to study the properties of hand postural synergies in humans, for the sake of ongoing neuro-science investigations. These data are analyzed and some comparison with similar studies are reported. After a meaningful mapping strategy has been devised, these data could be employed to define robotic hand postures amenable to attain effective grasps, or could be used as prior knowledge in lowerdimensional, real-time avatar hand animation.