US Patent Issued to The Trustees of Princeton University on Oct. 14 for "Bubble casting soft robotics" (French, American Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,441,040, issued on Oct. 14, was assigned to The Trustees of Princeton University (Princeton, N.J.).

"Bubble casting soft robotics" was invented by Pierre-Thomas Brun (Princeton, N.J.), Trevor J. Jones (Princeton, N.J.), Etienne Jambon-Puillet (Paris) and Joel Marthelot (Marseilles, France).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Disclosed herein is an all-in-one methodology for the fabrication and the programming of soft machines. Instead of relying on the assembly of individual parts, the disclosed approach harnesses interfacial flows in elastomers that progressively cure to robustly produce monolithic pneumatic actuators whose shape can easily b...