English

Physics-Conditioned Grasping for Stable Tool Use

Robotics 2026-03-11 v3

Abstract

Tool use often fails not because robots misidentify tools, but because grasps cannot withstand task-induced wrench. Existing vision-language manipulation systems ground tools and contact regions from language yet select grasps under quasi-static or geometry-only assumptions. During interaction, inertial impulse and lever-arm amplification generate wrist torque and tangential loads that trigger slip and rotation. We introduce inverse Tool-use Planning (iTuP), which selects grasps by minimizing predicted interaction wrench along a task-conditioned trajectory. From rigid-body mechanics, we derive torque, slip, and alignment penalties, and train a Stable Dynamic Grasp Network (SDG-Net) to approximate these trajectory-conditioned costs for real-time scoring. Across hammering, sweeping, knocking, and reaching in simulation and on hardware, SDG-Net suppresses induced torque up to 17.6%, shifts grasps below empirically observed instability thresholds, and improves real-world success by 17.5% over a compositional baseline. Improvements concentrate where wrench amplification dominates, showing that robot tool use requires wrench-aware grasp selection, not perception alone.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.01399,
  title  = {Physics-Conditioned Grasping for Stable Tool Use},
  author = {Noah Trupin and Zixing Wang and Ahmed H. Qureshi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.01399},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

In submission and under review

R2 v1 2026-06-28T23:19:27.331Z