AI-Driven and Additively Manufactured Spacesuit Gloves: A New Paradigm in Extravehicular Mobility Design

The development of next-generation EVA gloves requires design methods that improve fit, mobility, and manufacturability while reducing development time. Traditional modeling workflows are highly manual and slow to iterate, limiting the exploration of complex bladder– restraint geometries and mobility features. This paper presents an AI-assisted workflow that combines prompt-driven image generation using AI tools with mesh reconstruction and refinement in Rodin Hyper3D to rapidly produce functional, fully 3D-printable glove concepts. The generated models incorporate essential EVA glove elements such as restraint layers, articulated stress concentrators, and a hollow cylindrical cuff preserved as an open internal volume suitable for donning. This approach enables rapid conceptualization while maintaining additive manufacturing constraints including continuous pressure-retentive geometry. Preliminary results show that AI-driven geometry generation can deliver structurally coherent glove models appropriate for early mechanical assessment and prototype fabrication. This workflow establishes the foundation for a standardized design-to-print pipeline to support ongoing efforts at the University of North Dakota Human Space Flight Laboratory in developing next-generation 3D-printed glove prototypes for planetary EVA operations.