Grasp Taxonomy


The goal of this study was to determine the largest set of different grasp types that can be found in literature. A large number of literature sources of grasp taxonomies and grasp classifications were analized and compared. The definition of grasps relevant for the study is:
"A grasp is every static hand posture with which an object can be held securely with one hand."

In the "Documents" lists all documents related to the taxonomy. It includes a pdf to the paper and some documents that could not be presented in the full form in the publication.

In the "Taxonomy" section you can browse the grasps by the taxonomy. Good if you want to get an overview over the existing grasps and how they differ.

In the "Grasp List" section the grasps are arranged in a table.

Every grasp within "Taxonomy" and "Grasp List" is linked, so that you can get more information on that grasp, e.g. the authors referencing them. The results of the future research will be added mostly there.


[update August 2015]
We published a journal version of the initial abstact and the grasp webpage was updated accordingly. Please use the updated citation wherever possible. In terms of differences to the initial publication, the actual taxonomy and grasp list are unchanged. However, the grasp comparison table now incorporates additional publications that were not available for the initial publication and the grasp list was augmented with information on the grasp usage, as extracted from some related publications. Also, the publication discusses the taxonomy in much greater detail compared to the initial workshop paper.

If you used the taxonomy or the list of grasps for your research and you extracted additional properties of the grasps, feel free to get in contact and maybe we can even further augment the properties of the grasps.


For citation of the Taxonomy please use the following:

Feix, T.; Romero, J.; Schmiedmayer, HB, Dollar, A.M., Kragic, D.,
"The GRASP Taxonomy of Human Grasp Types,"
Human-Machine Systems, IEEE Transactions on, 2015.
bib, pdf
(please check back soon for updated citation key)