Using origami design principles to fold reprogrammable mechanical metamaterials

TLDR

Origami principles enable the creation of self‑folding robots and tunable metamaterials from flat templates. The study aims to develop robots that can be deployed in collapsed structures and autonomously assemble into functional forms. They fabricated a tessellated mechanical metamaterial whose unit cells reversibly switch between soft and stiff states, producing large, controllable changes in its compressive response. See Felton et al.

Abstract

Folding robots and metamaterials The same principles used to make origami art can make self-assembling robots and tunable metamaterials—artificial materials engineered to have properties that may not be found in nature (see the Perspective by You). Felton et al. made complex self-folding robots from flat templates. Such robots could potentially be sent through a collapsed building or tunnels and then assemble themselves autonomously into their final functional form. Silverberg et al. created a mechanical metamaterial that was folded into a tessellated pattern of unit cells. These cells reversibly switched between soft and stiff states, causing large, controllable changes to the way the material responded to being squashed. Science , this issue p. 644 , p. 647 ; see also p. 623