Developed by General Motors and NASA for the International Space Station, advanced robotic glove technology will soon be used in various industries back on earth.
Thanks to an agreement between GM and Swedish medical technology firm Bioservo Technologies AB, the two will join forces and combine their two robotic gloves into additional devices that’ll be used in health care, manufacturing and a host of other industries.
The glove created by GM and NASA, appropriately dubbed the RoboGlove, is so advanced that it can operate numerous hand tools thanks to its utilisation of actuators, tendons and sensors designed to mimic the human hand. Bioservo’s SEM Glove (Soft Extra Muscle) will add even more complexity and dexterity to the glove when the two are combined.
According to chief executive of Bioservo Technologies Tomas Ward, “Combining the best of three worlds – space technology from NASA, engineering from GM and medtech from Bioservo – in a new industrial glove could lead to industrial scale use of the technology.”
Initially, a new glove will be designed for grasping to help reduce fatigue in hand muscles, something that could prove particularly useful in operating theaters and automotive production facilities around the world.
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