How much does object symmetry actually simplify grasp planning in practice?

[diego.moore6]

@niklas29 I dealt with almost this exact situation. Grasp planning for deformable or non-rigid objects (bags, cables, cloth) remains one of the genuinely unsolved problems in manipulation - rigid-body grasp models simply don't capture how the object will behave once contact starts.

[deborah59]

@diego.moore6 Side note that might be relevant: A lot of the manipulation shown in production demos still leans heavily on teleoperation, particularly for anything involving fine force control or novel objects - autonomous grasp success rates on genuinely unstructured, previously-unseen clutter are still well below what teleoperation can achieve. Cable routing through a wrist joint with multiple degrees of freedom is a genuinely tricky mechanical design problem - tendons and wiring both need enough slack to avoid binding through the full range of motion without tangling or fraying over thousands of cycles.

[servosan90]

Sorry if this is a basic question, but Compliant wrists that absorb impact during a bad approach or misjudged contact reduce mechanical stress on the whole arm, which matters a lot for long-term reliability even though it's a less visible feature than the hand itself. Tendon-driven fingers let you move the heavier actuators back into the palm or forearm, keeping the fingers themselves light and fast, but they introduce cable routing, tensioning, and long-term wear problems that direct-actuated fingers don't have.

[elarsen]

@servosan90 Worth being a little skeptical of the marketing angle here. A lot of the manipulation shown in production demos still leans heavily on teleoperation, particularly for anything involving fine force control or novel objects - autonomous grasp success rates on genuinely unstructured, previously-unseen clutter are still well below what teleoperation can achieve.

[byang]

Counterpoint: Wet, oily, or otherwise low-friction objects are still a genuine edge case for most current hands, since tactile sensing and grasp-force controllers are typically tuned and validated on dry, higher-friction test objects. Cable routing through a wrist joint with multiple degrees of freedom is a genuinely tricky mechanical design problem - tendons and wiring both need enough slack to avoid binding through the full range of motion without tangling or fraying over thousands of cycles.

[karentaylor]

@byang Yeah, this tracks with what I've read as well. Tendon-driven fingers let you move the heavier actuators back into the palm or forearm, keeping the fingers themselves light and fast, but they introduce cable routing, tensioning, and long-term wear problems that direct-actuated fingers don't have. Makes me wonder how this looks in another five years.

[joseph.robinson]

@karentaylor Small correction on one detail: Figure's fourth-generation Dexterous Hand (on Figure 02/03) reportedly offers 16 degrees of freedom per hand with sensors integrated into each finger, aimed at fine force control tasks like handling small electronic components without crushing them.

[ethan.lewis5]

@joseph.robinson This matches what I've seen too. Vision-based grasp confidence estimation (predicting success before attempting a grasp) and tactile-based confirmation (confirming after contact) are complementary rather than competing - vision helps you choose a grasp, tactile tells you if it actually worked.

[gimbalyuk55]

Genuine beginner question - Vision-based grasp confidence estimation (predicting success before attempting a grasp) and tactile-based confirmation (confirming after contact) are complementary rather than competing - vision helps you choose a grasp, tactile tells you if it actually worked. Grasp planning for deformable or non-rigid objects (bags, cables, cloth) remains one of the genuinely unsolved problems in manipulation - rigid-body grasp models simply don't capture how the object will behave once contact starts.