The human hand is capable of performing countless grasps and gestures that are the basis for social activities. However, which grasps contribute the most to the manipulation skills needed during collaborative tasks, and thus which grasps should be included in a robot companion, is still an open issue. Here, we investigated grasp choice and hand placement on objects during a handover when subsequent tasks are performed by the receiver and when in-hand and bimanual manipulation are not allowed. Our findings suggest that, in this scenario, human passers favor precision grasps during such handovers. Passers also tend to grasp the purposive part of objects and leave “handles” unobstructed to the receivers. Intuitively, this choice allows receivers to comfortably perform subsequent tasks with the objects. In practice, many factors contribute to a choice of grasp, e.g., object and task constraints. However, not all of these factors have had enough emphasis in the implementation of grasping by robots, particularly the constraints introduced by a task, which are critical to the success of a handover. Successful robotic grasping is important if robots are to help humans with tasks. We believe that the results of this work can benefit the wider robotics community, with applications ranging from industrial cooperative manipulation to household collaborative manipulation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations –citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.