Research/ ORBITAL ROBOTICS
REACCH - Reactive Electro-Adhesive Capture ClotH Mechanism to Enable Safe Grapple of Cooperative/Non-Cooperative Space Debris
Sriram Narayanan, David Barnhart, Rebecca Rogers, Gabriella Dean, Sofia Bernstein, Amrita Singh, Oswin Almeida, Soundarya Sampathkumar, Everett Maness, Rahul Rughani, Donald Ruffatto, Ethan W Schaler, Nikko Van Crey, Alisha Bhanji, Eric Junkins
Manipulation & Graspingtext match
No official subject categories from arXiv, OpenAlex or NTRS for this paper.
USC’s Space Engineering Research Center (SERC) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have created a unique “octopus” tentacle end effector for robotic systems that uses formable electro-adhesion (EA) and Gecko adhesion capture cloth material. REACCH, or Reactive Electro-Adhesive Capture ClotH, supports soft capture of objects of any size, shape, surface finish or material on-orbit. To-date SERC/JPL have developed initial tentacles and backing spines that can control the EA/G material. Prototypes with two tentacles have been demonstrated and tested on a 3-DOF air bearing device in 1g in one plane of grip. The results show promise to further develop this new type of grappling mechanism able to make first soft contact with an object, with a technology that merges compliance and control elements for future on-orbit servicing and assembly missions. This paper presents the initial design and test results on this type of system.