A Case Western Reserve University researcher has turned the origami she enjoyed as a child into a patent-pending soft robot that may one day be used on an assembly line, in surgery or even outer space.
Kiju Lee, the Nord Distinguished Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and her lab have moved from paper robots to 3-D-printed models that bend, contract, extend and twist. This novel mechanism is called TWISTER (TWISted TowEr Robot).
A video is available at case.edu/mae/robotics/videos/OrigamiBot_IEEERA-L.mp4
TWISTER was inspired by an origami twisted tower originally designed by Japanese artist Mihoko Tachibana, which uses multiple origami segments to form a tower structure. This origami design was then reinvented for various potential applications in robotics and manufacturing.
In her earlier work using paper-folded structures, Lee’s team added three small versions of the towers to one end of the larger tower and manipulated them to grasp like three opposing fingers. While picking up and moving eggs and ripe fruit, Lee’s team found that when excessive force was applied, the fingers absorbed the extra force by distributing it and deforming.
That quality, the researchers say, demonstrates the design’s potential for manipulating all kinds of fragile objects without requiring force-based sensing and interacting with humans, without safety concerns.
Recently, Lee successfully converted the TWISTER designs into 3-D printable models. This work enabled fabrication of complex origami-inspired designs via 3-D printing.
“Among the possibilities for this robot are fragile-object manipulation and direct human-robot interaction, because these robots are soft and safe,” said Lee, who will present her latest study at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in Vancouver today (Sept. 27).
“TWISTER is very different from rigid body robots,” she said.
Learn more: Case Western Reserve University researchers design soft, flexible origami-inspired robot
The Latest on: Origami-inspired robot
[google_news title=”” keyword=”origami-inspired robot” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
- Micro-hexapod robot with an origami-like SU-8-coated rigid frameon April 1, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Hexapod robots are suitable for moving over uneven terrain. In order to use micro-hexapod robots for swarm exploration, it is necessary to reduce the robot’s size while maintaining its rigidity.
- Flexible, resilient origami-inspired bridges could help navigate disaster zoneson March 17, 2024 at 5:00 pm
[Related: Microflier robots use the science of origami to ... The result—the Modular and Uniformly Thick Origami-Inspired Structure (MUTOIS) system—not only solves this long-standing stress ...
- See the Terrifying New Robot That Can Pack Itself Flat And Turn Into Every Shapeon February 2, 2024 at 3:35 pm
The robot, whose design was inspired by the decorative flair of Japanese origami, is able to pack itself completely flat like a piece of Ikea furniture, according to a recent write-up in Futurism.
- 2cm long? Shape-shifting spider robot touted to be rescue game changeron November 7, 2023 at 5:03 am
Engineers at the University of Colorado Boulder have made a significant breakthrough in this field by developing a spider-inspired ... robot’s miniature size was made possible through an origami ...
- A Real-Life, Origami-Inspired Transformer (1 of 12) (IMAGE)on December 10, 2022 at 10:06 pm
The self-folding crawling robot in three stages -- profile view ... The paper, by Samuel Felton at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering in Cambridge, MA, and colleagues ...
- 9 origami-inspired homeware buys that will add some dimension to your spaceon August 24, 2022 at 1:03 am
Embrace the art of paper folding with these origami-inspired home accessories. There’s something about origami that has always fascinated me. Often associated with Japanese culture, origami is ...
- Origami DNA is unfolding the mysteries of mechanical cell signalingon August 4, 2022 at 5:00 pm
A three-dimensional DNA origami robot has been developed to probe the mechanism of recently discovered cellular receptors sensitive to touch and force. On a cellular level, our bodies have a dense ...
- Bringing The Art Of Origami And Kirigami To Robotics And Medical Technologyon March 8, 2022 at 4:01 pm
(2014) (PDF), a similar method to Randall et al is used, except on a much larger scale with self-assembling robots. The essential idea here is to use the concept of computational origami to create ...
- Origami robot muscles lift 1,000 times its own weighton August 16, 2020 at 6:10 am
Artificial muscles which allow soft robots to lift up to 1,000 times ... and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Inspired by origami, the muscles can be programmed a range of motions ...
- The origami-inspired mini-surgeon roboton August 8, 2020 at 12:22 pm
It gets 'superpowers' from folded exoskeletons. This video has been optimised for mobile viewing on the BBC News app. The BBC News app is available from the Apple App Store for iPhone and Google ...
via Google News and Bing News