'While this force is held in place, adhesion forces known as van der Waals forces induce adhesion between the structures and the surface they're attached to. 'Each gecko toe consists of hundreds of microscopic structures called setae these structures collapse when force is applied to it and expand in surface area,' Cauligi said. Grippers inspired by how the feet of geckos attach to surfaces could be far more effective, as they may also allow robots to grasp objects with unusual and unfavorable geometries. This mechanism can be very limiting for free-flying robots that are meant to operate in space, as these robots might need to grasp objects of varying shapes and sizes under unfavorable environmental conditions. Most existing robotic grippers are based on a 'claw-like' mechanism, which allows them to grapple or pinch around objects to securely grasp them. The researchers closely collaborated with scientists at NASA to design a gripper that could be integrated onto the current version of the Astrobee and that would be safe to launch to the ISS. The Astrobee robot then has to interpret this command, make high-level decisions of where it should go to find this tool, compute a trajectory for how it should get there and once it arrives, pick up the tool.' 'For example, a pie-in-the-sky goal one day would be that an astronaut asks for Astrobee to go retrieve a tool from another module of the ISS. 'Working together, our two labs were interested in equipping free-flyers in space with gecko-adhesives, in order to allow them to complete a rich set of tasks,' Abhishek Cauligi and Tony Chen, lead researchers on the project, told TechXplore. The project was funded by a NASA Early Stage Innovations grant, which is designed to support teams who are developing gecko-inspired technologies that can be applied to free-flying robots on the International Space Station (ISS). The new gripper created by these two labs, set to be presented at the i-SAIRAS conference and introduced in a paper pre-published on arXiv, was applied to the Astrobee, a free-flying robotic system developed at NASA. The BDML group at Stanford has expertise in the manufacturing and use of gecko-inspired adhesives for robotics applications, while the ASL team focuses on the development of algorithms that equip free-flyers with autonomous capabilities.

Two labs at Stanford University, namely the Biomimetics & Dexterous Manipulation Lab (BDML) and the Autonomous Systems Lab (ASL), have been trying to develop gecko-inspired technologies that could enhance the manipulation capabilities of free-flying robots.

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