Crafting Material Interfaces

Electroactive polymers (EACs), essentially speaking, are bits of rubberish stuff that changes shape when a current is applied. They’ve been around for some time and they’re not all that difficult to fabricate yourself. The paper that we read, by Petralia and Wood, explores how practically, one goes about making such a thing. Though they do their [...]

Research by Ade, Jill, and Sara In this post we’ll explore the mechanical process of “jamming” in granular materials. We’ll be focused on an exciting new application of this technology—robotic “gripper” instruments—made possible by exploiting this property, and we’re pulling a lot of the data and photos from the paper, “Universal Robotic Gripper Based on [...]