Micro-g NExT is a year-long design challenge hosted by NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX.

For the 2019 competition, we chose the Mini-Arm End-Effector challenge. Scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have designed a robotic arm that will be used to handle samples underwater on missions to ocean worlds like Europa and Enceladus, and we designed and built a gripper that interfaces with the robotic arm and interact with samples. Our design used a soft robotics approach that involves a granule-filled bag that can go between malleable and rigid states to achieve grip. Team members gained valuable hands-on experience with mechanical and electrical engineering.

The team was led by Nina Arcot ‘20.