1978 – Manned Remote Work Station (MRWS) – Grumman (American)

1978 – Manned Remote Work Station (MRWS) by Grumman. MRWS multi-role concepts in support of large space systems. More advanced repair platforms for the RMS have been studied by NASA and Grumman Aerospace Corp. The remote work station (RWS) would resemble the manipulator foot restraint and have controls for the Extra-vehicular activity (EVA) astronaut and …

1973-8 – Daedalus ‘Wardens’ (Concept) – Bond, Martin, Grant et al (British)

An autonomous Warden building, servicing and maintaining Daedalus.  Above image source: Robots, by Peter Marsh, 1985 Autonomy and the Interstellar Probe – Sourced from here. by Paul Gilster on March 19, 2013 daedalus_final_report …..The span between the creation of the Daedalus design in the 1970s and today covers the development of the personal computer and …

1978 – “Chiritori” Remote Control Vacuum Cleaner by Nintendo – Gunpei Yokoi (Japanese)

US Patent Information: Publication number US4306329 A Publication date Dec 22, 1981 Filing date Oct 5, 1979  Inventors Gunpei Yokoi Original Assignee Nintendo Co., Ltd. Self-propelled cleaning device with wireless remote-control Abstract A self-propelled cleaning device with wireless remote control includes a body, a driving device on the body for moving the same rotatably about …

1978 – “Mechanimals” Illustrations – Murray Tinkelmann (American)

U&lc. Illustrated by Murray Tinkelman, December 1979 I love machinery. I love drawings, photographs and diagrams of machinery, particularly diagrams. They look important, they demand respect, and they inspire confidence. How dare anyone doubt that those dotted lines, those beautiful arrows, and the mystically placed little uppercase letters indicate something of great but obscure significance? …

1978 – Pneumatic Inflatable End Effector – Keith Clark (American)

Above: Keith Clark demonstrates his design for an innovative end effector which would inflate inside, and so grip, a tubular truss structure. Back in 1978, another type of end effector under study for the Space Shuttle's Remote Manipulator System (RMS) was actually a balloon. The sort of aluminium truss beams proposed for use in space construction …