Design And Implementation Of Spatial Biomimetic Adhesive Device

With the development of aerospace technology around the world,the amount of satellites,rocket bodies and pieces of debris in Earth orbit has increased rapidly.In this situation,working satellites are very likely to be damaged by colliding with space debris and the government will suffer significant property loss.More seriously,it will generate more debris and influence other satellites.Therefore,it is necessary to grapple and remove space debris.As non-cooperative targets in space,there is no specific mechanical interfaces on this debris.Moreover,the structural and kinetic characteristics of debris are various.Traditional grasping methods like rigid grapple(based on compressing two faces on the target to generate adequate friction force)or grappling by net have great limitations.In recent years,researchers discover that there are many tiny setae arrays on geckos' pads.When the setae arrays fully contact with the surface,they will generate big enough Van der Waals force to support gecko to move on any surfaces.At the same time,the pad will not be influenced by environmental medium due to its characteristic of dry adhesive.Biomimetic adhesive pad which is manufactured based on real gecko's pad is possible to be applied in space environment.However,biomimetic adhesive pad cannot realize the adhesion and detachment by itself.It must rely on adhesive and detachment motion control by a mechanism in order to manipulate the non-cooperative targets.In this paper,the biomimetic adhesive device is designed and manufactured.The design of biomimetic adhesive device is proposed based on the characteristics of the biomimetic adhesive pad and the target.Then,the model of the device is built to analyze the adaptability for different target characteristics.Furthermore,key parameters which effect the adhesive/detachment results of the device can be determined and they are optimized to improve the adaptability for different target characteristics.At last,biomimetic adhesive devices are manufactured with optimized parameters.