Abstract

Applications of electroadhesion include automation and inspection robots, consumer gripper devices, anchoring tools used in the military and biomedical industry, and more recently, mechanisms for spacecraft docking. The purpose of this study is to characterize geometries of electroadhesion samples for application in spacecraft docking and propose a metric to predict the interaction between geometry and captured object. Shear forces of electroadhesion samples composed of Kapton(R)Polyimide insulating material with embedded aluminum foil electrodes and three common space-rated substrate materials were measured. Responses of the electroadhesion samples configured in three geometries were identified using substrates attached to dynamic two-dimensional air bearing platforms. Geometries included a flat plate design as a prototype for cubesats, a concave, cylindrical design for potential application to …

Date

2017

Authors

Mikela Ritter, David Barnhart

Conference

2017 IEEE Aerospace Conference

Pages

1-8

Publisher

IEEE