Origami Inspires Rise of Self-Folding Robot
New York Times-Aug 7, 2014
Inspired by origami, the Japanese paper-folding art, such robots could be deployed, for example, on future space missions, Mr. Felton said.
An
intricately cut sheet lies flat and motionless on a table. Then Samuel
Felton, a graduate student at Harvard, connects the batteries, sending
electricity coursing through, heating it. The sheet lurches to life, the
pieces bending and folding into place. The transformation completes in
four minutes, and the sheet, now a four-limbed robot, scurries away at
more than two inches a second.
The creation, reported Thursday in the journal Science, is the first robot that can fold itself and start working without any intervention from the operator.
“We’re trying to make robots as quickly and cheaply as possible,” Mr. Felton said.
Inspired
by origami, the Japanese paper-folding art, such robots could be
deployed, for example, on future space missions, Mr. Felton said. Or
perhaps the technology could one day be applied to Ikea-like furniture,
folding from a flat-packed board to, say, a table without anyone
fumbling with Allen wrenches or deciphering instructions seemingly
rendered in hieroglyphics.
Paper Robot That Puts Itself Together
Using flat materials and a design
inspired by origami, the art of paper folding, researchers have created a
robot that can assemble without human intervention.
Video Credit By Samuel Felton on
Publish Date August 7, 2014.
Image CreditSeth Kroll/Wyss Institute
Mr. Felton’s sheet is not simple paper, but a composite made of layers of paper, a flexible circuit board and Shrinky Dinks
— plastic sheets, sold as a toy, that shrink when heated above 212
degrees Fahrenheit. The researchers attached to the sheet two motors,
two batteries and a microcontroller that served as the brain for the
robot. Those components accounted for $80 of the $100 of materials
needed for the robot.
While
the robot could fold itself, the sheet took a couple of hours for Mr.
Felton to construct. Still, it was simpler and cheaper than the
manufacturing process for most machines today — robots, iPhones, cars —
which are made of many separate pieces that are then glued, bolted and
snapped together.
Mr. Felton’s adviser, Robert J. Wood,
a professor of engineering and applied sciences, was initially
interested in building insect-size robots. But for machines that small,
“there really are no manufacturing processes that are applicable,” Dr.
Wood said.
Building
small components on a flat sheet is easier, employing technologies from
the computer chip industry, and Dr. Wood thought the complex,
three-dimensional structures could be folded out of the flat sheet. Over
several years, Dr. Wood’s team built on the idea, producing a printed
robotic inchworm and a self-folding lamp. The earlier projects, however,
required human assistance during construction.
With
the process now fully automated, robots could be efficiently packed for
travel and deployed in places, like outer space, where there are no
people.
“It’s just an amazing feat of engineering,” said Michael Dickey,
a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina
State University who was not involved in the project but provided the
inspiration for using Shrinky Dinks in self-folding structures. “It’s
all programmed in, and you hit go.”
Mr.
Felton meticulously designed this particular robot, but the hope is
that the mathematics of origami folding will allow computer software to
figure out the cuts and folds needed to create complex robots capable of
doing almost any task. Mr. Felton is now adapting the technique on a
smaller scale to pursue Dr. Wood’s initial vision of insect robots. He
said he had succeeded in folding structures, but had not yet created the
motors to make them move.
A second paper in Science this week
describes how origami folding can alter the properties of a material.
“That isn’t something that is really done in the material science
community,” said Itai Cohen, a professor of physics at Cornell and the senior author of the paper.
Dr.
Cohen and his colleagues examined sheets with a particular pattern of
repeating folds known as Miura-ori tessellation. By popping out some of
the folds, the properties of the sheets changed, becoming stiffer or
curved or able to swing like a hinge.
“It becomes this kind of material you can transform on the fly, and that’s what’s really interesting,” Dr. Cohen said.
For
example, a folded-up sheet could be unfurled on top of a building and
then made rigid, forming a roof. Or the technique could be incorporated
into the surface of robotic limbs, floppy and flexible when reaching for
an object and then stiffening to pick it up.
“This is still all science fiction,” he acknowledged.
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