| The purpose of this grant is to develop soft, wearable actuators with enhanced power output compared to the state of the art by combining cutting edge synthetic and biosynthetic materials. Existing wearable actuators either require bulky power sources and rigid “exoskeletons” to be effective, or are limited in their utility by low power outputs. The grant represents a collaboration between Northeastern, Technical University of Denmark, and EPFL (Switzerland). The Joshi lab at Northeastern will focus on developing protein fiber materials from engineered bacteria with optimal mechanical and electrostatic performance. |