Micro-g Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Design Team (Micro-g NExT) is an annual NASA design competition that challenges undergraduate students to design, build and test a tool or device to function in microgravity environments. The Princeton team is competing in the Mini-Arm End-Effector challenge. The team is desinging and building a gripper that will interface with a robotic arm, that has been designed by scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), that will be used to handle samples underwater on missions to ocean worlds like Europa and Enceladus. The design project titled "Soft Robotic Gripper for Ocean Worlds" uses a soft robotics approach that involves a granule-filled bag that can go between malleable and rigid states to achieve grip.
The Princeton team is 1 of 19 teams selected for the competition to be held at NASA facilities June 3 - 6, 2019.
The Princeton University's team members are Nina Arcot (MAE), Alex Rogers (MAE), Whitney Huang (MAE), Kyle Johnson (ELE), Cindy Li and Hoang Le (Prospective ELE's '22), Alexander Essig (Woodrow Wilson), Jacob Essig and Elizabeth Petrov (Prospective COS's '22), Thomas McBride, Shaylee McBride, and Andrew Xu (Prospective MAE's '22).
