Advancements in Origami-Inspired Robots

What is it about?

Robots are influencing our daily lives at an increasing rate of instigating positive changes. They have already started to influence the environment around us thereby making our lives easier. The major contribution of robots can be observed in the field of manufacturing. To increase productivity, large assembly lines incorporate automated robots that are programmed to perform a specific task at the stations. They are also widely used in various fields like Aerospace, Automobile, Medical, Agriculture, etc. Therefore it is important to develop a robot Architecture based on their uses for various dynamic working conditions. Robots are traditionally defined as rigid machines that are devised for a particular set of the task which is to be carried out efficiently and within restricted compliance. They are comprised of links that are rigid and hard. These links have their own space of working and are unsafe for the human to interact within that workspace. Hence we could see the separation that exists between human and robotic workspace. The solution to this problem is by replacing the conventional linked mechanical system with soft and flexible Actuators. These actuators are safer as they could absorb the impact force and can deform elastically, thereby reducing the chance of damage. Soft robots are one of the branch of robotics that incorporates the use of highly compliant materials which are found inside a living organism. These robots resemble the movement of a living organism at a microscopic level. In contrast with the robots made of rigid links, these bots have high adaptability and flexibility to produce a complex movement in consideration to a specific task. It may consist of a rigid internal structure with a soft outer body that tries to replicate the muscles of a vertebrate. These kind systems can be fabricated using elastomers as well as papers that constitutes the basic building block. The actuation by elastomers is possible by a pneumatic driven elastomeric actuator or magneto-sensitive elastomer bodies. Apart from elastomers, the actuating system can also be built by using a paper folding technique known as “Origami”. Paper is also used as one of the compliant materials that are integrated with the electronic circuits to obtain the required system. Technological advancements in robotics have made us realize that self-folding is versatile in nature and recent computational methods have led us in the rapid simulation of the folding process of certain origamis. So for that tessellations is one of the techniques that are incorporated with the origami to build the self-folding soft robots.

Featured Image

Photo by Eivarain on Unsplash

Photo by Eivarain on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Terrestrial locomotion systems are dominated by systems with legs and wheels, but they have a limited field of application. A future microrobot with high mobility requires the use of non-conventional locomotion and actuation principle. The use of origami technique can also influence the rapid prototyping of intelligent robots and machines that are built from thin sheets of functional and compliant materials.These origami-inspired structures are now used as a replacement for a conventional linked mechanical system with a simple one-layer structure.

Perspectives