Multi-fingered Hand Grasps with Visuo-Tactile Fusion via Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning

Humans achieve contact-rich dexterous grasping through the synergy of visual and tactile information. However, the high-dimensional action space of high DoF multi-fingered hands poses significant challenges to this operation. In this study, we address this complexity by controlling the robotic hand at the reduced dimensional level of individual fingers instead of the entire hand, and develop a finger-based multi-agent deep reinforcement learning strategy by regarding the wrist, arm, and each finger of the hand as intelligent agents. We commence by applying a single-agent reinforcement learning algorithm to guide the whole hand to reach the feasible approaching direction and distance to the object. Then, we develop neuroscience-inspired visuo-tactile fusion networks to train multiple agents to control their assigned fingers by effectively leveraging visual and tactile feedback. This enables dynamic and collaborative adjustments of finger-object interactions, ultimately achieving precise contact with specific areas of the objects. The grasping results on 8 objects show that our approach can achieve stable and compliant grasps. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that employs a finger-based multi-agent reinforcement learning approach to control the dexterous grasping process under the guidance of both visual and tactile feedback.