Dressed in their very thick spacesuits, which were also equipped with bulky backpacks, the Apollo astronauts who walked on the moon were subjected to one-sixth of Earth’s gravity, but the same inertial force as they would experience on our planet. world. All of this meant that not only did they occasionally fall to the ground, but it also made it difficult for them to get up. In view of new astronaut missions to the moon, some engineers have devised robotic limbs as an exoskeleton to avoid this problem.
A team including Harry Asada and Erik Ballesteros, both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, is designing, with the support of NASA, a pair of wearable robotic limbs that can physically support an astronaut to the moon and pick him up after a fall.
The system, which its creators call SuperLimbs (Supernumerary Robotic Limbs), is designed to pop out of a backpack that would also carry the astronaut’s life support system, along with a control module and motors to drive the limbs.
The researchers built a physical prototype as well as a control system to direct the limbs based on feedback from the astronaut using them.
Asada, Ballesteros and their colleagues hypothesize that the SuperLimbs system can physically assist astronauts on the moon after a fall, and in the process help them conserve energy for use in other essential tasks. SuperLimbs could prove especially useful in the coming years, with the progress of NASA’s Artemis program, which plans to send astronauts back to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.
Erik Ballesteros testing the SuperLimbs system. (Photo: Research and Development Team / MIT. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Unlike the primarily exploratory Apollo mission, astronauts in the Artemis program will devote time and effort to building the first permanent lunar base, a physically demanding task that will require several extended extravehicular battles. It is in this type of activity that there is the greatest risk of falling to earth, as seen in the Apollo program; Most of these astronauts’ falls occurred while they were excavating or working with a tool. (Fountain: NCYT de Amazings)
