{"id":18898,"date":"2017-06-28T17:54:44","date_gmt":"2017-06-28T09:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/were-bad-at-cleaning-up-the-trash-in-space-so-a-gecko-gripper-robot-is-here-to-help\/"},"modified":"2017-06-28T17:54:44","modified_gmt":"2017-06-28T09:54:44","slug":"were-bad-at-cleaning-up-the-trash-in-space-so-a-gecko-gripper-robot-is-here-to-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/were-bad-at-cleaning-up-the-trash-in-space-so-a-gecko-gripper-robot-is-here-to-help\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re bad at cleaning up the trash in space, so a gecko gripper robot is here to help"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_344521\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-344521\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-344521\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/jiang3HR-630x374.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"630\" height=\"374\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/jiang3HR-630x374.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/jiang3HR-768x456.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/jiang3HR.jpg 777w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-344521\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scientists tested their robotic gripper on NASA\u2019s reduced gravity aircraft, known as the Weightless Wonder. (Jiang et al. \/ Stanford University via Science \/ AAAS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Sandra Bullock\u2019s character nearly got killed by space debris in the movie \u201cGravity\u201d \u2014 but had she been equipped with the gecko-like robot built by researchers from Stanford University and NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, there would have been a lot less drama.<\/p>\n<p>Stanford\u2019s&nbsp;Hao Jiang and his colleagues created a space gripper equipped with postage stamp-sized patches of material that look superficially like refrigerator magnets. Those looks can be deceiving, though: Magnets don\u2019t work on glass or aluminum, and other grappling methods such as suction or chemical adhesion don\u2019t work in a vacuum.<\/p>\n<p>To create \u201cmagnets\u201d suitable for grabbing space debris, the team stole a trick from the geckos instead. The technology is described this week in a paper published by Science Robotics.<\/p>\n<p>Aaron Parness from JPL\u2019s Extreme Environments Robotics Group is part of the research team, and explained how the robotic grippers work last year during a NASA briefing. \u201cGeckos stick using something called Van der Waals forces,\u201d he said. \u201cThey have tiny hairs on their feet that allow them to take advantage of these forces.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The hairy, sticky material on the team\u2019s artificial gripper doesn\u2019t feel sticky to the touch. It actually feels like rubber.&nbsp;\u201cIt\u2019s not unlike a silicone cooking spatula. You can put it in the freezer and it\u2019s fine. You can put it in boiling water, and it\u2019s fine,\u201d said Mark&nbsp;Cutkosky, a mechanical engineering professor at Stanford.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Gecko gripper in action\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mZf7lnehpHg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The tiny hairs are structured to produce an attractive force that makes them adhere to a surface without glue. While current manufacturing methods can\u2019t create microscopic spindles as fine-scaled as the hairs on a gecko\u2019s feet, the sticky patches on the mechanical gripper are close enough to the general shape to take advantage of Van der Waals forces.<\/p>\n<p>Parness said geckos can change the directionality of the hairs on their feet to stick onto a surface, and then let go at will. \u201cIf the gecko pulls down on its foot, it\u2019s very sticky, but if the gecko doesn\u2019t pull down or pushes up or to the side, it\u2019s not sticky at all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers\u2019 gecko gripper is built the same way. Parness explained that the on-off ability is important, because if something is just generally sticky, you\u2019d have to give it a hard pull to get it unstuck. This can be a problem in space, where a sharp pull can send space junk hurtling off in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n<p>The team tested the gripper at JPL in Pasadena, Calif., where it successfully grappled test objects weighing as much as 800 pounds. They also tried it out during brief periods of zero-G on NASA\u2019s reduced-gravity airplane, known as the \u201cWeightless Wonder\u201d or the \u201cVomit Comet.\u201d Those tests showed that that the gripper could grab onto flat and round objects with just a gentle tap, and release the objects with the push of a button.<\/p>\n<p>Follow-up tests on the International Space Station confirmed that the technology worked during prolonged weightlessness as well. If the astronauts left the gripper engaged, it could maintain stickiness for weeks at a time.<\/p>\n<p>A round object, such as a low-mass inflatable beach ball, presents a challenge because the gripper could push the object out of reach. \u201cAlthough it doesn\u2019t require much adhesion, it does require a very tiny engagement force because it is easy to knock the ball away,\u201d Jiang said.<\/p>\n<p>When the experiments took advantage of that engagement force, the gripper\u2019s success rate was 100 percent for a test sphere, compared to 75 percent for a cube and 81 percent for a cylinder. \u201cThe failures were due to excessive misalignment between the gripper and the objects, caused by inaccurate positioning by the human operator or by the object bumping into obstacles that caused substantial disturbance,\u201d the researchers said in their study.<\/p>\n<p>Jiang told GeekWire that many adhesive technologies struggle to grab onto something like a ball with a small pressing force, but this is one of the gecko adhesive\u2019s strengths.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_345146\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-345146\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-345146\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/170628-grippers-630x395.jpg\" alt=\"Gripper photo\" width=\"630\" height=\"395\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/170628-grippers-630x395.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/170628-grippers-768x481.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/170628-grippers-1260x790.jpg 1260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/170628-grippers.jpg 2010w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-345146\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The dark pads in this photo of the gripping device are made of adhesive material inspired by the hairs on a gecko\u2019s foot. (Jiang et al., Sci. Robot. 2, eaan4545, 2017, via Science \/ AAAS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The gecko adhesive was also tested on NASA\u2019s Limbed Excursion Mechanical Utility Robot 3, better known as LEMUR 3. The robot can use tiny hooks to grab onto rocky surfaces, and use gecko grippers to walk across smooth surfaces like solar panels or the exterior surface of a spacecraft. Such a&nbsp;robot could be used for inspections and repairs that astronauts would normally have to do themselves.<\/p>\n<p>During a Facebook live presentation, Parness said that the team is working on maturing the technology in space. <span class=\"s1\">\u201cAs we move forward, the next step will be to do a robotic gripper on the outside of the space station,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The gripper could have applications on Earth as well. Even Ford has expressed interest, Cutkosky said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can grasp quite gently and carry a very heavy load,\u201d he said, so it could be ideal for lifting delicate windshields or heavy car parts.<\/p>\n<p>The gripper could also be used in the medical field. In the future, the team is thinking about ways to attach prosthetics to the limbs of amputees. Cutkosky said one challenge is that the gecko material doesn\u2019t work well in wet conditions, so it may not be useful for skin bandages or underwater exploration.<\/p>\n<p>Experts say space is cluttered with more than 20,000 pieces of orbiting junk that are bigger than a softball, plus millions of smaller pieces that have gone unrecorded. Jiang says that because there aren\u2019t any cleanup technologies in space right now, astronauts have to dodge the incoming junk.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen there are dangers from debris, the space stations usually&nbsp;need to adjust their orbits slightly to avoid the debris,\u201d he explained in his email to GeekWire.<\/p>\n<p>A wide range of strategies have been proposed to clean up the mess \u2014 for example, pulling in pieces of debris with a robotic arm, or harpooning them, or pushing them into a net.<\/p>\n<p>Such procedures can pose a risk of breaking the debris into bunches of smaller pieces, however. Gecko grippers may offer a gentler way for space robots to clean up the mess, thanks in part to the lessons we\u2019ve learned from the reptiles.<\/p>\n<p><em>In addition to Jiang and Parness, the co-authors of the Science Robotics study, titled \u201cA Robotic Device Using Gecko-Inspired Adhesives Can Grasp and Manipulate Large Objects in Microgravity,\u201d include&nbsp;Elliot Hawkes, Christine Fuller,&nbsp;Matthew Estrada, Srinivasan Suresh,&nbsp;Neil Abcouwer, Amy Han, Shiquan Wang,&nbsp;Christopher Ploch and Mark Cutkosky.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists tested their robotic gripper on NASA\u2019s reduced gravity aircraft, known as the Weightless Wonder. (Jiang et al. \/ Stanford University via Science \/ AAAS) Sandra Bullock\u2019s character nearly got killed by space debris in the movie \u201cGravity\u201d \u2014 but had she been equipped with the gecko-like robot built by researchers from Stanford University and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5382,717,4974,4180],"class_list":["post-18898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-gecko","tag-international-space-station","tag-robots","tag-space-junk"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}