Human Grasp Taxonomy

Understanding the way humans grasp objects, knowing the kinematic implications and limitations associated with each grasp, and knowing common use patterns is important in many domains ranging from medicine and rehabilitation, psychology, and product design, among many others. In human-computer interaction in general and tangible user interfaces in particular, the hand is used to interact with the technology. In device and interface design, it is not only important to understand grasp posture during normal use, but also how that posture is adjusted according to the task demands. The complexity and variety of uses of the human hand makes the categorization and classification of hand function challenging. The hand has 15 joints (not taking the carpal and metacarpal joints in the base of the palm into consideration), which result in more than 20 degrees of freedom. There is little current consensus about the definition of the range of grasp types that humans commonly use. Through human studies and literature review, our work aims to find the most representative sets of distinct grasps and synthesize them into definitive classifications.