Related papers: Inflatable Kirigami Crawlers
Soft robots are known for their ability to perform tasks with great adaptability, enabled by their distributed, non-uniform stiffness and actuation. Bending is the most fundamental motion for soft robot design, but creating robust, and…
Rigidly and flat-foldable quadrilateral mesh origami is the class of quadrilateral mesh crease patterns with one fundamental property: the patterns can be folded from flat to fully-folded flat by a continuous one-parameter family of…
Kirigami metamaterials dramatically change their shape through a coordinated motion of nearly rigid panels and flexible slits. Here, we study a model system for mechanism-based planar kirigami featuring periodic patterns of quadrilateral…
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…
Recently, simple scaling laws concerning the mechanical response and mechanical transition of Kirigami have been revealed through agreement between theory and experiment for kirigami made of paper [M. Isobe and K. Okumura, Sci. Rep. 2016].…
Mechanical waves that travel without inertia are often encountered in nature -- e.g. motion of plants -- yet such waves remain rare in synthetic materials. Here, we discover the emergence of slow kinks in overdamped metamaterials and we…
Programmable folding of elastic sheets typically relies on predefined flexible creases or active materials-enabled hinges, which lack intrinsic bistability and limit reprogrammability within a single structure. Here, we present a…
We use a regular arrangement of kirigami elements to demonstrate an inverse design paradigm for folding a flat surface into complex target configurations. We first present a scheme using arrays of disclination defect pairs on the dual to…
The use of origami in engineering has significantly expanded in recent years, spanning deployable structures across scales, folding robotics, and mechanical metamaterials. However, finding foldable paths can be a formidable task as the…
Over the past decade, kirigami--the Japanese art of paper cutting--has been playing an increasing role in the emerging field of mechanical metamaterials and a myriad of other mechanical applications. Nonetheless, a deep understanding of the…
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…
The concept of kirigami has been extensively utilized to design deployable structures and reconfigurable metamaterials. Despite heuristic utilization of classical kirigami patterns, the gap between complex kirigami tessellations and…
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…
Designing a robot or structure that can fold itself into a target shape is a process that involves challenges originated from multiple sources. For example, the designer of rigid self-folding robots must consider foldability from geometric…
Nematic elastomers dramatically change their shape in response to diverse stimuli including light and heat. In this paper, we provide a systematic framework for the design of complex three dimensional shapes through the actuation of…
Continuum and soft robots can leverage complex actuator shapes to take on useful shapes while actuating only a few of their many degrees of freedom. Continuum robots that also grow increase the range of potential shapes that can be actuated…
Origami-inspired structures have a rich design space, offering new opportunities for the development of deployable systems that undergo large and complex yet predictable shape transformations. There has been growing interest in such…
Deployable structures inspired by origami have provided lightweight, compact, and reconfigurable solutions for various robotic and architectural applications. However, creating an integrated structural system that can effectively balance…
Soft actuators have shown great advantages in compliance and morphology matched for manipulation of delicate objects and inspection in a confined space. There is an unmet need for a soft actuator that can provide torsional motion to e.g.…
Shape-morphing structures, which are able to change their shapes from one state to another, are important in a wide range of engineering applications. A popular scenario is morphing from an initial two-dimensional (2D) shape that is flat to…