GM, NASA Jointly Developing Robotic Gloves for Human Use
“General Motors and NASA are jointly developing a robotic glove that auto workers and astronauts can wear to help do their respective jobs better while potentially reducing the risk of repetitive stress injuries. The Human Grasp Assist device, known internally in both organizations as the K-glove or Robo-Glove, resulted from GM and NASA’s Robonaut 2 (R2) project, which launched the first human-like robot into space in 2011. R2 is a permanent resident of the International Space Station.”
NASA, GM Jointly Developing Robotic Gloves for Human Use
Keith’s note: Talk about a cool spinoff – being developed in real time on Earth and in space – one that leverages a public/private partnership between NASA robotics and private sector manufacturing know-how. You’d think that the people at NASA who have the job of promoting spinoffs, advanced technology, etc. i.e. The Chief Technologst’s Office (OCT) would be drooling over this – and helping to promote it every way that they can. Guess again. No mention of this at the CTO main website (although the CTO’s travel plans seem to be important) and no mention on the Spinoff page.

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member...

13 replies on “Yet Another Spinoff the CTO Is Not Telling You About”

    1. This is not a link from the NASA CTO. It is also one of the 2 press releases I cite. Not sure what your point is.

      1. Sorry: I saw the spaceref domain in both links but did not see the different source credits. I thought both were the GM release.

        That said, my point was that NASA does have a release out on this, and they are getting coverage all over the web for it. Given that this is an ISS-driven project, doesn’t it make sense that it is their release?

        1. The CTO’s job is to be bringing new stuff like this into the agency – and for the agency’s expertise to be applied externally – and to point to examples where that is already being done. His office is dropping the ball- daily – in this regard.

  2. I take issue with this being called “spin-off”, since it was not required for the exploration of space. (nor, frankly, was an anthropometric robot) but it definitely looks like useful technology. 

    But at NASA if you have an idea, no matter how useful,  you cannot get any funding for it unless you can somehow spin the myth that it is “tied to space”, essential for the one true mission, putting a few civil servants on the moon again. Now obviously the need for robotic technology in mining and manufacturing on earth is not only orders of magnitude greater, but is actually of practical value and might even create American jobs. But no one will fund a project at NASA to develop mining robots unless you can spin the fairly tale that they are only for mining on the moon. Of course anyone who gets such a project funded will ry to go after terrestril applicaitons, but these will be claimed as “free” incdental benefits of the essential space project, which by twisted logic justifies the huge cost of the entire space program.

    The central problem is that the US lacks a Department of Science and Technology. There is no way to coordinate the R&D efforts of NIST, DOE, DOD NASA, NSF, NIH, Department of Agriculture, etc. and consequently the government has no efficient way to support the industries that critically need R&D support to compete in an increasingly competitive world, while NASA engineers who happen to have exprtise in robotics have no way to justify using it to improve productivity and save lives in mining.

      2. Well, not that it really matters, since you guys were citing different news outlets, but if the timestamps on the respective pages are to be believed, Spinoff linked a little after 1pm, and NASA Watch posted a little before 3pm.

        Who’s to say it wasn’t NASA Watch taking notice of Spinoff? 😉

        1. Wrong. This was posted on NASA Watch at 10:42 am EDT on 13 March. The tweet from @NASAspinoff was done at 1:10 pm EDT.NASA CTO’s webpage did not have it linked until the next day.

  4. This is a great development from a NASA partnership, but it’s not a spinoff yet, so it makes sense that OCT hasn’t made any mention of this outcome on the Spinoff website. A technology needs to be commercialized before it qualifies as a NASA spinoff, and based on this information it looks like this technology is still in development. Very cool, but not a spinoff yet.

    Even so, the Spinoff Twitter feed, Facebook page, and Google+ page all posted  about the robot gloves yesterday more than an hour before your post here, so they were aware of it and shared it for the general interest of their social media audience.

  5. Keith,

    About the spinoffs, you’d think…. they’d be ‘drooling over this’ …. wrong. 

    NASA’s OCT has no true interest in spinoffs, because the spinoffs do not benefit OCT.   OCT’s mandate is to pursue technology and platform development and keep the ranks employed.  That is what they are “scored on”.  They are not scored on helping 3rd parties.  Life isn’t about you, it’s about them.   It’s about NASA, not the Nation.  Their mandates even say so.

    OCT has created their own government funded artificial business domain.  And they love it.  When you complain, you simply irritate them and upset their paradise.  When you complain, you tend to alert Congress, appropriations, OSTP, and OMB as to OCT’s failure to relate to the Nation and perform usefully.  Since none of those agencies will do anything about OCT productivity failures anyway, all you wind up doing is irritating all of them more.  Face it Keith, you’re a giant irritant.  

    OCT will go build some new $50M platform.  And yes, because NASA engineers are truly good, it will be techno-cool.   When done, they’ll place in on the public doorstep.  They’ll have a party to celebrate and declare it a technological success and be done with it.  No sustaining funding or effort, no actions to ensure end-use or that it is productive, because OCT knows that “that’s na ma job”.  OCT’s job is only to advance technology, not to take steps to ensure it is used.  Using it is somebody else’s job.  And OCT has not a clue or interest in who those somebody else’s are. 

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