Grasping the Future: Manipulation That Works

Robotic manipulation looks simple—until it touches the real world. Grasping the Future: Manipulation That Works tackles one of robotics’ hardest problems: reliably picking up, holding, and interacting with objects that are irregular, fragile, and unpredictable.
This book is grounded in physical reality. It examines why grasping fails outside controlled demos and what actually makes manipulation succeed in production environments. Instead of idealized hands and perfect models, it focuses on uncertainty: variable shapes, slippage, occlusion, compliance, and imperfect sensing. The emphasis is on robustness over elegance.
Readers are guided through the shift from brittle grasps to adaptable manipulation—where feedback, contact dynamics, and learning inform action in real time. The book treats manipulation as an integration problem, where mechanics, perception, and control must work together continuously.
This book explores:
• Why most grasping solutions fail in the wild
• How contact and compliance change manipulation
• Why feedback beats precomputed grasps
• How learning improves reliability, not just accuracy
• What “working” manipulation really means on the floor
This book is for engineers and researchers who care less about perfect grasps and more about repeatable success. If your robots must handle real objects, at real speed, under real constraints, this book shows how manipulation actually works.