Functionalized structural components with adaptive stiffness for soft robotic applications

Soft and compliant materials are used in Soft Robotics to ensure systems with high inherent safety for human machine interaction. Thereby current soft robots mostly lack the required stiffness. To realize a bigger load capacity while ensuring inherent safety, structures with adjustable stiffness are required. This work presents a novel and advanced concept based on material jamming, mainly focused on high dynamic stiffness change and high stiffness ratio. Ideas for transferring this approach into a programmable material are demonstrated.