Robotic arms or manipulators can be utilized to grasp inventory items within an inventory system. Information about an item to be grasped can be detected and/or accessed from one or more databases to determine a grasping strategy for grasping the item with a robotic arm or manipulator. For example, one or more accessed databases can contain information about the item, characteristics of the item, and/or similar items, such as information indicating grasping strategies that have been successful or unsuccessful for such items in the past.