FORGET the complex choreography involved in putting on a spacesuit: astronauts will one day be able to get suited and booted in seconds by stepping through the neck of an overlarge, part-robotic spacesuit.
So say engineers and at the University of Maryland in College Park.
Once you’re inside the baggy suit, its upper torso contracts using pneumatic artificial muscles to ensure a perfect fit.
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Its morphing design means it should be less unwieldy than today’s suits and allow astronauts to be more efficient, both during spacewalks and in planetary exploration, Jacobs told the recent in Daejong, South Korea.
“Our research shows that of the physical work astronauts actually do on a spacewalk, only one-quarter of it is mission related. The rest goes into just moving the spacesuit around,” says Akin. Robotic actuators are also being applied to the suit’s gloves.
“Most of the physical work astronauts do on a spacewalk goes into just moving the spacesuit”
The researchers’ “supersuit” also includes new visual aids in the form of stereo LCD spectacles and an in-helmet video screen.
The LCD glasses can show a user augmented reality imagery, for example, allowing an astronaut to see the position of a nearby spacecraft that’s hidden from view.
The smart spacesuit is being tested in the university’s neutral buoyancy tank.
