Gecko Inspired Technology

Gecko Inspired Technology

(Used to remove Space debris)

A team of researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is working on a Gecko-inspired technology that could be used to build tools that could tightly grip or hold-on to the space debris or satellites that are no more functional. In short, the NASA team is working on building robotic adhesive tools that could catch the huge amounts of man-made debris floating in the space around earth. Known as the Gecko Gripper project, the the system was recently tested in a brief C-9B parabolic flight aircraft in August this year. NASA folks are aware that the floating orbital debris is hazardous to many spacecrafts including the ISS or International Space Station (Statistics state that about 21,000 pieces of orbital debris larger than 3.9 inches in size are floating around Earth). Therefore, the JPL robotics researchers had to seek inspiration in geckos (the lizards that are found easily clinging on to the walls) to come up with a solution for this pertinent problem. 

This is not the first time that scientists have found properties of Gecko inspiring. In fact, it was only recently that DARPA developed gecko-inspired Z-Man Paddles that could help climb walls without additional gear. Any Gecko's feet have super-tiny hair which stick to a rough surface without the need of much external force. Taking cue from that, the NASA JPL researchers duplicated the property on the adhesive pads of the grippers by putting hair-like structures on it. These synthetic hair posses a slanted, mushroom-shaped cap. When the gripper even lightly touches part of any object, only the ends or tips of the hair make contact with that surface. The stickiness can be varied or even turned on/off simply by changing the direction in which the hair are pulled.

In order for the gripper to stick to the surface, the hair are bent by applying force on the adhesive pad, thereby increasing the surface area of contact between the hair and the surface, which in turn provides for greater adhesion. In one of their tests, the gecko grippers was able to grapple a 20-pound cube as it floated and also a researcher wearing a vest made of spacecraft material panels, representing a 250-pound object.

You can check out a video put together by the JPL team to see the Gecko Grippers in action under microgravity here -