The “feel” of a manipulated object depends upon several factors including its weight and moment of inertia. Although weight has received considerable investigation, less attention has been paid to moment of inertia. This paper summarizes the present state of knowledge regarding the moment of inertia of hand held objects. In addition, three simple models for estimating an object's moment of inertia are compared. A linear regression model was found superior to simple geometric models for 80 common objects with carefully measured moments of inertia. This information is useful in product design, remote manipulation and robotics.
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