Programmable matter by folding

By E. Hawkes, Byoungkwon An, Nadia M. Benbernou, Hiroto Tanaka, Sangbae Kim, Erik D. Demaine, Daniela Rus, Robert J. Wood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010

631 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Programmable matter is a material whose properties can be programmed to achieve specific shapes or stiffnesses upon command. This concept requires constituent elements to interact and rearrange intelligently in order to meet the goal. This paper considers achieving programmable sheets that can form themselves in different shapes autonomously by folding. Past approaches to creating transforming machines have been limited by the small feature sizes, the large number of components, and the associated complexity of communication among the units. We seek to mitigate these difficulties through the unique concept of self-folding origami with universal crease patterns. This approach exploits a single sheet composed of interconnected triangular sections. The sheet is able to fold into a set of predetermined shapes using embedded actuation. To implement this self-folding origami concept, we have developed a scalable end-to-end planning and fabrication process. Given a set of desired objects, the system computes an optimized design for a single sheet and multiple controllers to achieve each of the desired objects. The material, called programmable matter by folding, is an example of a system capable of achieving multiple shapes for multiple functions.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a22b2c67dcaeb6c2af35f555414adf4a4b807950

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Biomedical Engineering

1. Robert J. Wood
2. Daniela Rus
3. Michael Thomas Tolley
4. Carmel Majidi
5. Katia Bertoldi
6. H. Jerry Qi
7. Johannes T. B. Overvelde
8. John Peter Whitney

In Mechanical Engineering

1. Daniela Rus
2. Robert J. Wood
3. Michael Thomas Tolley
4. Carmel Majidi
5. H. Jerry Qi
6. Martin L. Dunn
7. Johannes T. B. Overvelde
8. Qi Ge

Citations in the corpus

• Self-Foldability of Rigid Origami (2016, background): “, multilayered shape memory materials [1,2] or polymer gel [8].”
• Self-folding origami: shape memory composites activated by uniform heating (2014, methodology): “At the centimeter scale, we have previously used shape memory alloys to actuate a self-folding sheet of programmable matter [21].”
• Origami-inspired active structures: a synthesis and review (2014, background): “the SMA side, Rus and coworkers [102, 103] developed a concept of self-folding origami with universal crease patterns that consisted of a single sheet with repeated triangular tiles connected by pre-engineered actuated hinges.”