Abstract
In this work, the robotic grasping problem is addressed with a bio-mimetic approach. Looking at the capabilities of some special climbing plants, the tendril behavior has been focused, modeled and simulated from a kinematic point of view. First of all, the three main tendril movements, i.e. circumnutation, coiling and free-coiling, have been evaluated; after that, a modular kinematic model able to take into account the main tendril features has been defined; then, the kinematics of the system has been solved and a tendril-kinematic simulator implemented.