Title: Jamming of granular media for soft robotic applications

Author (Poster): Nadia Cheng, MIT

Abstract:

Jamming of granular media has become increasingly utilized as a variable stiffness mechanism for industrial and robotic applications. The goal of our work is to better understand how grain properties affect jamming so that granular systems can be designed to fulfill the requirements of a given application. We have primarily focused on experimental studies to analyze how certain grain properties—such as shape and size distribution—affect the performance of granular systems.