Hitting with Different Joints of a Robotic Manipulator

This paper builds up the skill of impact aware non prehensile manipulation through a hitting motion by allowing the robot arm to come in contact with the environment with parts other than its end effector. Hitting with other joints allows us to manipulate heavier objects since the robot effective inertia is higher at joints other than its end effector. Preliminary work to align the robot to hit an object from a certain joint while having better understanding of desired directional inertia values is presented.