Grasping and Fixturing

Although one version of this problem comes from robotics and the other comes from manufacturing, the aim of both is the same: to construct a placement of obstacles (robot fingers or fixtures) preventing the movement of some part.

• The CMU fixture design and analysis tool for testing the suitability of proposed fixtures.

• FixtureNet, an interactive application for constructing fixtures.

• Fixturing and setup planning. From a paper on automated manufacturability analysis at U. Maryland, the contents page of which seems to be missing.

• Probabilistic Algorithms for Efficient Grasping and Fixturing. This paper by Marek Teichmann, at the 5th MSI Worksh. Comp. Geom., shows that grasping and fixturing are related by geometric duality to problems of approximating many-faceted convex polyhedra by simpler shapes (previously studied for their application in graphics).

• Robotics papers and preprints, list of online papers on sensor based planning, grasping and fixturing, locomotion, and other robotics topics, maintained by Howie Choset, CMU.

• Twelve open problems in industrial robotics.

• US Patent 5465221 describes a part inspection system including the use of convex hulls to determine stable orientations.