Astronaut Glove Assistant
Nitinol Wire school project 2012
Astronaut Glove Assistant
2012
Starting a project with a complex material is always a challenge. During my spring semester, of junior year 2012 I took a 'futuristic materials' course called 'Reactive Matter' where we got to experience working hands-on with some reactive materials...one of which was muscle wire.
"Solve a problem using this material."
A very open ended prompt…but with my forever nerdy love for space, (and robots,) muscle wire was the perfect fit to resolve a problem i was passionate about: astronaut gloves. It's light weight, incredibly strong for its scale, and requires very little electricity to function.
I chose to build a small-mass system within astronaut gloves that work in concert with muscles and bones to assist the astronauts, and improve dexterity while in space.