Posts Tagged ‘origami’
Video: “Smart Sheets” Can Self-Assemble Into Airplanes, Boats
It's a far cry from previous programmable matter research we've seen, which works at the nanoscale to create and .
The fiberglass sheets are about a half-millimeter thick and made of half-inch-wide triangular tiles. They can be made at a larger scale, enabling machines that can fold, Transformer-like, into any number of objects.
Though the goal is to make large objects, the folding involves some nano-scale circuits. MIT computer scientist Daniela Rus embedded shape-memory strips, made of a nickel-titanium alloy, that were about 100 microns thick -- the width of a human hair. The sheets were also outfitted with stretchable copper-laminated plastic mesh, which served as wires.
Electricity running through the copper mesh was applied to the alloy strips, which change shape at different temperatures. When the alloy strips reached 178 degrees F, they bent, taking the whole sheet with them. The sheets folded into a variety of shapes in a matter of a few seconds, and magnetic closures helped them stay in place.
Eventually, the 32-tile sheets folded into boats and airplanes. Rus says the key was figuring out algorithms for folding. It was like learning origami, she says in a -- "We determine, based upon the desired end shapes, where to crease the sheet."
To make the folds, the team came up with thin stickers that contained the circuitry required to spur the alloy strips into action. Though the current design uses a computer, future designs will allow multiple stickers that can be changed without any computer programming. If you want a boat, you use one sticker; for a fork, use a different sticker.
The goal is to make sheets that could fold into multiple items, like a dining utensil set or a "Swiss Army Knife" tool kit.
More than meets the eye, indeed.
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Tiny Titanium Origami Highlights New Method Of Micro-Construction
The researchers start by printing out a flat sheet of titanium hydride. Normally, this material is too rigid to fold, but the printing process imbues the "ink" with a number of solvents that soften it up enough for manipulation. In the case of the crane, it took 15 steps to go from a flat sheet to a finished bird.
This material is malleable enough to fold, but strong enough to retain its shape once the folding process is complete. Additionally, titanium hydride can be treated after folding to become pure metallic titanium. That way, a potential medical device could be folded into the desired shape, and then transformed into a substance that the body wouldn't reject.
The scientists have just begun to explore the implications of this technique, so it might be a while before a doctor actually uses a stent or implant created by folding titanium hydride. However, Japanese legend holds that if someone folds 1,000 origami cranes, a real crane will grant their wish. So all the researchers need to do is fabricate 999 more of these, and just wish for a practical application for this technology to arrive within a year. Easy!