Soft Gripping System for Space Exploration Legged Robots

TL;DR

This paper introduces a soft, adaptable gripping system with microspines for space exploration legged robots, enabling reliable anchoring on uneven rocky terrains for tasks like climbing and asteroid surface exploration.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel segmented tendon-driven gripper with microspines, enhancing adaptability and adhesion for space exploration robots over prior rigid or less adaptable systems.

Findings

The gripper effectively adapts to various target shapes and surfaces.

Performance depends on pulling angle, spine configuration, and actuation power.

Experimental results demonstrate suitability for lunar caves and asteroid surfaces.

Abstract

Although wheeled robots have been predominant for planetary exploration, their geometry limits their capabilities when traveling over steep slopes, through rocky terrains, and in microgravity. Legged robots equipped with grippers are a viable alternative to overcome these obstacles. This paper proposes a gripping system that can provide legged space-explorer robots a reliable anchor on uneven rocky terrain. This gripper provides the benefits of soft gripping technology by using segmented tendon-driven fingers to adapt to the target shape, and creates a strong adhesion to rocky surfaces with the help of microspines. The gripping performances are showcased, and multiple experiments demonstrate the impact of the pulling angle, target shape, spine configuration, and actuation power on the performances. The results show that the proposed gripper can be a suitable solution for advanced space exploration, including climbing, lunar caves, or exploration of the surface of asteroids.