New Smart Glove Allows Astronauts to Remotely Operate Drones

2024 will be a big year for NASA. With the Artemis program NASA will land the first women and next man on the Moon, after which they’re off to Mars. They’ll also be utilizing a new high-tech “smart glove” that will allow them to operate drones and robotics “with a flick of their fingers and a twist of their wrist,” IFLScience.com reported. 

“Astronauts need spacesuits that make it easy for them to interact with their environment, including performing complex and delicate tasks,” Dr. Greg Quinn, advanced spacesuit development lead at Collins Aerospace, said in a statement. “The next generation suit will incorporate intelligent technologies that will take current capabilities to a new level.”

The glove, developed by Ntention, features a custom-designed microchip with sensors on the fingers and the back of the hand that register movements over the x-, y-, and z-axes and can be used to control a drone that can collect samples, assist in search and rescue, isolate samples from contamination, survey, map, scout and fetch. There are also accompanying augmented reality display glasses that allow the astronaut to receive video feedback from the drone in real-time.  

“We believe that the technology we’re developing could represent a paradigm shift. Our system is much more intuitive than the rigid controller used in a lot of contexts. We’re able to incorporate more sensors and more data into our glove technology and scale it all up so that the glove becomes a finely tuned controller,” Frank Øygard, a product and development strategist at Ntention said. “Over time, we can include other types of sensors and build interaction systems that can handle increasingly complex tasks.”

Check out a video of this new technology in action here.