Speakers
Description
Abrasive, electrostatically charged lunar regolith threatens every surface that humans, robots, rovers, and habitats interact with, from sealing gaskets to the mucous membranes of astronauts (NASA Science). Current engineering responses largely treat dust as a passive contaminant, yet long‑duration stays will demand materials that actively interact dynamically with their users and environments. Researchers from TU/Eindhoven and RWTH Aachen present our concepts on interaction‑design‑enabled textile system that encompasses electrodynamic electrodes and micro‑structured fibre geometries for architectural, mobility, and wearable textiles in exoplanetary contexts. We intend to create textiles that can attract and repel regolith, creating opportunities for dynamic everyday interaction in long-term scenarios. For example, when the crew enters an airlock or wipes down an interior panel, a low‑power pulse in the textile shuttles regolith away, while the wiping textile structurally contains sensing and actuation yarns that adapt for cleaning efficacy and indicate remaining dust load.
By fusing human‑computer interaction principles with emergent electro‑textile engineering, the project offers a practicable path toward safer, cleaner, and more sustainable long-term lunar operations. Our international team intends to iteratively prototype textiles, testing them in interaction scenarios, including inflated garments, rovers, and habitats. Our project concept builds on recent in‑situ demonstration of electrodynamic dust shields, which expelled >95 % of adhered particles on the lunar surface, but reframes the technology to also attract regolith and as a soft, modular interface that should be handled, repaired, and possibly up‑cycled by astronauts. We are seeking interactive evaluations in ESA‑compatible dust chambers and everyday lunar scenarios that will quantify removal efficiency, user workload, and system durability against the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium performance targets (NASA). The resulting design guidelines will be released as an open‑science “Textile Interaction Handbook for Regolith Management", enabling mission planners to integrate dust‑aware fabrics into mobile rovers, inflatable laboratories, and next‑generation xEVA suits.
