This
paper discusses the problem of stable grasping and object manipulation
by a pair of robot fingers when fingertips are covered
with soft compressible material and fingers are allowed to incline
their last link against the object surface. The area contact
between the fingertips and the rigid object surface leads to
nonholonomic constraints even for the planar case; however, the variational
principle can be applied and the equation of motion is
derived as a set of nonlinear differential equations with extra
terms of Langrange multipliers incorporating the constraints. The proposed feedback
controller is a linear combination of simple feedback control signals
each designed for realizing grasp stabilization, regulation of object rotation
and regulation of object position respectively. The controller is shown
to achieve asymptotic convergence to the desired state at a
stable grasping configuration. Simulation results are presented confirming the theoretical
findings.