Official News page 8

GADGET OF THE WEEK: POWER-ASSISTED ROBO-GLOVE

by Hazed

From the department of I-Want-One-Of-Those: NASA have teamed up with engineers from GM to produce a robo-glove that gives a power-assist to the wearer. It is designed to minimize repetative stress injuries in astronauts.

But just think of all the other applications it could have! No more struggling to get the lid off the jam jar.

It has actuators in the upper sections of each finger, along with pressure sensors. When the sensors detect that the user is grasping an object, the glove’s synthetic tendons retract which pulls the fingers into a gripping position and holds them there. So users don’t have to strain to maintain their grip.

Tests show that if a task normally requires a grip of 15 to 20 pounds, then wearing the Robo-Glove the user only had to apply 5 to 10 pounds. Sweet!

Source: http://www.gizmag.com/nasa-gm-robo-glove/21817/

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