US Patent Issued to Yale University on May 12 for "Tensile jamming fibers" (Connecticut Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,624,478, issued on May 12, was assigned to Yale University (New Haven, Conn.).

"Tensile jamming fibers" was invented by Bilige Yang (New Haven, Conn.), Robert Baines (New Haven, Conn.), Xiaonan Huang (New Haven, Conn.), Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio (New Haven, Conn.) and Dylan Shah (New Haven, Conn.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present invention relates to fiber jamming systems capable of tuning tensile stiffness of soft systems within seconds without the use of high voltage or temperature changes. The systems employ segmented fibrils of interspersed segments of stretchable and non-stretchable materials. Applying a vacuum to the fibrils...