Described are techniques for storing and retrieving items using a robotic manipulator. Images depicting a human interacting with an item, sensor data from sensors instrumenting the human or item, data regarding physical characteristics of the item, and constraint data relating to the robotic manipulator may be used to generate one or more configurations for the robotic manipulator. Points of contact and force vectors of the configurations may correspond to the points of contact and force vectors determined from the images and sensor data.