EVA Spacesuit Glove Service Life Test System Based On Robotic Hand Technology

With the development of China’s space programs, extravehicular activity (EVA) is increasingly frequent. However, the safety of the astronaut is always threated by harsh space environment such as high vacuum, extreme temperature and radiation. If the EVA spacesuit was worn and leak air, it would be hazard to the life of astronaut. As hand movement is the most frequent and important during EVA operation, EVA spacesuit gloves is more likely to be worn. Hence, to test the service life of EVA spacesuit glove is very important for design and application of EVA spacesuit.To test the life of EVA spacesuit glove by astronaut is a very hard and tedious work, and the test parameters are also not easy to be record. To develop a robot hand to operate the EVA spacesuit glove quickly; meanwhile the air pressure inside the EVA spacesuit glove can be real-time monitored by sensor. In this way EVA spacesuit glove service life test can be accomplished quickly and accurately. The key technology for EVA spacesuit glove service life test system is to drive fingers to simulate the trajectories of the squeezing movement. As the internal space of EVA spacesuit glove is very narrow, dexterous robot hand designed has to be similar to human hand both in shape and size.In the paper, the finger kinematics model was established by D-H transformation matrix. Meanwhile, trajectory of the movement was simulated by MATLAB. Dynamics of finger movement was also simulated by the combination of INVENTOR and ADAMS. The simulation and analysis provides theoretical basis for the system development.On the basis of theoretical research, a robot hand was developed and tested; an external driving system based on pneumatic cylinders was also designed to operate the finger and wrist movement. Also, a passive robot hand was developed in glove to improve the movement of the EVA spacesuit glove more similar to human hand operation. Pressure sensors, pneumatic valves and NI card are used to setup the control device of the test system. The software of the measurement and control system was developed by Labview.The test system was already used in EVA spacesuit glove life test. The results show that to combine external drive and internal robot hand in the test system is successful. The research is very important for material durability research ad structure design of the EVA spacesuit.