Manipulation

Force Closure

Force closure is a grasp property in which the contact forces that the fingers can apply, accounting for friction, span the entire wrench space, allowing the grasp to resist any external force and torque applied to the object. A force-closure grasp can hold an object against arbitrary disturbances provided contact forces remain within their friction cones. It is a classical criterion in grasp analysis and a standard filter in grasp planning pipelines.

Why it matters for physical AI

Grasp stability guarantees still anchor how planners and learned grasp detectors are evaluated; force closure provides the physics-based ground truth against which data-driven grasp quality predictions are validated.