Related papers: Patterning nonisometric origami in nematic elastom…
Self-folding origami, structures that are engineered flat to fold into targeted, three-dimensional shapes, have many potential engineering applications. Though significant effort in recent years has been devoted to designing fold patterns…
Dielectric elastomers are an emerging class of highly deformable electro-active materials employed for electromechanical transduction technology. For practical applications, the design of such transducers requires a model accounting for…
Surface plasmon resonances generated in metallic nanostructures can be utilized to tailor electromagnetic fields. The precise spatial arrangement of such structures can result in surprising optical properties that are not found in any…
We study the three-dimensional equilibrium shape of a shell formed by a deployed accordion-like origami, made from an elastic sheet decorated by a series of parallel creases crossed by a central longitudinal crease. Surprisingly, while the…
The ability to transform a flat sheet into a complex three-dimensional structure is a fundamental test of physical intelligence. Unlike cloth manipulation, origami is governed by strict geometric axioms and hard kinematic constraints, where…
Periodic origami patterns made with repeating unit cells of creases and panels bend and twist in complex ways. In principle, such soft modes of deformation admit a simplified asymptotic description in the limit of a large number of cells.…
In this study, we examine a rapid and reversible origami folding method by exploiting a combination of resonance excitation, asymmetric multi-stability, and active control. The underlying idea is that, by harmonically exciting a…
Nematic elastomers are rubbery solids which have liquid crystals incorporated into their polymer chains. These materials display many unusual mechanical properties, one such being the ability to form fine-scale microstructure. In this work,…
Building AI systems that can plan, act, and create in the physical world requires more than pattern recognition. Such systems must understand the causal mechanisms and constraints governing physical processes in order to guide sequential…
Object manipulation is a fundamental challenge in robotics, where systems must balance trade-offs among manipulation capabilities, system complexity, and throughput. Distributed manipulator systems (DMS) use the coordinated motion of…
The macroscopic shape of liquid crystalline elastomers strongly depends on the order parameter of the mesogenic groups. This order can be manipulated if photoisomerisable groups, e.g. containing N=N bonds, are introduced into the material.…
Origami, the ancient art of folding thin sheets, has attracted increasing attention for its practical value in diverse fields: architectural design, therapeutics, deployable space structures, medical stent design, antenna design and…
Origami inspired architectures offer a powerful route toward lightweight, reconfigurable, and programmable robotic systems. Yet, a unified mechanics framework capable of seamlessly bridging rigid folding, elastic deformation, and stability…
Kirigami-inspired designs can enable self-folding three-dimensional materials from flat, two-dimensional sheets. Hierarchical designs of connected levels increase the diversity of possible target structures, yet they can lead to longer…
Recently, inflatable elements integrated in robotics systems have enabled complex motions as a result of simple inputs. However, these fluidic actuators typically exhibit unimodal deformation upon inflation. Here, we present a new design…
Macroscale robotic systems have demonstrated great capabilities of high speed, precise, and agile functions. However, the ability of soft robots to perform complex tasks, especially in centimeter and millimeter scale, remains limited due to…
We introduce a new class of thin flexible structures that morph from a flat shape into prescribed 3D shapes without an external stimulus such as mechanical loads or heat. To achieve control over the target shape, two different concepts are…
We present a unified formulation of a rotationally invariant nonlinear elasticity for a variety of spontaneously anisotropic phases, and use it to study thermal fluctuations in nematic elastomers and spontaneously anisotropic gels. We find…
Origami structures have been proposed as a means of creating three-dimensional structures from the micro- to the macroscale, and as a means of fabricating mechanical metamaterials. The design of such structures requires a deep understanding…
We characterize the phase-space of all Helical Miura Origami. These structures are obtained by taking a partially folded Miura parallelogram as the unit cell, applying a generic helical or rod group to the cell, and characterizing all the…