Abstract
Many animals, such as elephants and octopuses, can change the stiffness of their limbs and trunks. This allows them to move around their environments as well as grab things and move them around. We would love our soft robots to be able to do the same! We can do this using a technique called jamming, in which the materials in the trunk are packed together to change its stiffness. Jamming has been used in all sorts of soft robots, like robotic hands for gently picking up fruits and vegetables, exoskeleton suits, and surgical instruments. In this article, we will talk about the three main types of jamming that are used in soft robotics, and show how they can be used in real life. And guess what? At the end of the article, we will describe the use of jamming to build a robotic elephant trunk that can change its stiffness, just like a real elephant’s trunk!