A grasp generation technique for robotic pick-up of parts. A database of solid or surface models is provided for all objects and grippers which are to be evaluated. A gripper is selected and a random initialization is performed, where random objects and poses are selected from the object database. An iterative optimization computation is then performed, where many hundreds of grasps are computed for each part with surface contact between the part and the gripper, and sampling for grasp diversity and global optimization. Finally, a physical environment simulation is performed, where the grasps for each part are mapped to simulated piles of objects in a bin scenario. The grasp points and approach directions from the physical environment simulation are then used to train neural networks for grasp learning in real-world robotic operations, where the simulation results are correlated to camera depth image data to identify a high quality grasp.