Related papers: Soft kirigami composites for form-finding of fully…
Deployable structures, essential across various engineering applications ranging from umbrellas to satellites, are evolving to include soft, morphable designs where geometry drives transformation. However, a major challenge for soft…
Nematic elastomers and glasses are solids that display spontaneous distortion under external stimuli. Recent advances in the synthesis of sheets with controlled heterogeneities have enabled their actuation into non-trivial shapes with…
Soft materials have many important roles in animal locomotion and object manipulation. In robotic applications soft materials can store and release energy, absorb impacts, increase compliance and increase the range of possible shape…
Shape-programmable soft materials that exhibit integrated multifunctional shape manipulations, including reprogrammable, untethered, fast, and reversible shape transformation and locking, are highly desirable for a plethora of applications,…
Kirigami is the art of cutting paper to make it articulated and deployable, allowing for it to be shaped into complex two and three-dimensional geometries. The mechanical response of a kirigami sheet when it is pulled at its ends is enabled…
As we enter the age of designer matter - where objects can morph and change shape on command - what tools do we need to create shape-shifting structures? At the heart of an elastic deformation is the combination of dilation and distortion,…
Propagating transition fronts, in which local interactions sequentially trigger state changes, are widely observed across natural, biological, and engineered systems. While such propagation has been engineered using energy-driven…
One of the trendsetting themes in soft robotics has been the goal of developing the ultimate universal soft robotic gripper. One that is capable of manipulating items of various shapes, sizes, thicknesses, textures, and weights. All the…
Adaptation to various scene configurations and object properties, stability and dexterity in robotic grasping manipulation is far from explored. This work presents an origami-based shape morphing fingertip design to actively tackle the…
Here we describe an ultra-low-cost origami-based approach for large-scale manufacturing of microscopes, specifically demonstrating brightfield, darkfield, and fluorescence microscopes. Merging principles of optical design with origami…
Materials that are lightweight yet exhibit superior mechanical properties are of compelling importance for several technological applications that range from aircrafts to household appliances. Lightweight materials allow energy saving and…
A folded disk is bistable, as it can be popped through to an inverted state with elastic energy localized in a small, highly-deformed region on the fold. Cutting out this singularity relaxes the surrounding material and leads to a loss of…
This study proposes a reconfigurable modular building system that assembles multistable curved-crease origami blocks. Curved-crease origami is designed with even-vertex polygonal trajectories and an elastica curvature profile. We then…
Yoshimura origami is a classical folding pattern that has inspired many deployable structure designs. Its applications span from space exploration, kinetic architectures, and soft robots to even everyday household items. However, despite…
Inspired by biological systems, we introduce a general framework for quasi-static shape control of human-scale structures under slowly varying external actions or requirements. In this setting, shape control aims to traverse the stable…
Acoustic metamaterials offer exceptional control over wave propagation, but their potential remains unfulfilled due to fabrication constraints. Conventional processes yield mostly rigid, planar structures, whereas soft-matter alternatives…
Existing Civil Engineering structures have limited capability to adapt their configurations for new functions, non-stationary environments, or future reuse. Although origami principles provide capabilities of dense packaging and…
The principles of origami design have proven useful in a number of technological applications. Origami tessellations in particular constitute a class of morphing metamaterials with unusual geometric and elastic properties. Although…
The art and science of folding intricate three-dimensional structures out of paper has occupied artists, designers, engineers, and mathematicians for decades, culminating in the design of deployable structures and mechanical metamaterials.…
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…