A Self-Folding Origami Robot is Created
Thursday, March 28, 2024

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"This device could be sent somewhere and function without anyone else being involved," says Sam Felton, a Harvard doctoral student in mechanical engineering and lead author of the paper, published in the journal Science, that announced the robot. As befits a robot that relies on the principles of origami, it's made of paper, layered with a circuit board and "a contractile layer of prestretched polystyrene," as the paper describes. It's the same prestretched polystyrene that make up Shrinky Dinks, those colorful sheets children color and cut into shapes, then pop into the oven so they shrink and harden. Cleverly, the Shrinky Dink material in this case was used to make the folds—when the joints are heated by internal heating elements, the prestretched polystyrene contracts, causing the joint to buckle into the desired angle fold.

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The joints are left to cool between foldings, allowing them to harden. In that sense, the robot is not a true transformer, since once it has folded itself up it can't be unfolded. When it has finished its origami metamorphosis, the robot can start to walk, powered by two motors on its back.

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While 3D printing has gotten the lion's share of attention, Felton and others at his Harvard lab see origami-inspired folding as a promising alternative. Complex machines could be printed on two-dimensional sheets, then fold themselves into shape, either immediately or when needed.  "We were originally inspired by making robots as quickly and cheaply as possible," says Felton. "The long-term plan is printable manufacturing; the short-term plan is building robots that can go into places where people can't go. You could send a ream of sheets into space that then unfold into a satellite."

 

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The $1 Paper Foldscope Microscope That Could Change the World

When diagnosing people in the developing world, health workers often go into the field lugging bulky, fragile, and expensive microscopes. "We ship research equipment and hope it'll survive," says Manu Prakash, a biophysicist. While traveling in Thailand, the scientist dreamt up a lightweight, low-cost alternative: a pocket-sized paper microscope made from a single sheet of folded paper, a pair of lenses, and an LED. Approximate cost: $1. Prakash's Foldscope could have a big impact on diagnosing disease in remote or resource-poor regions of the world. The microscope is not only cheap to produce, it's also relatively sophisticated, achieving a magnification of 2,000 times—equal to the power of a desktop instrument costing $1,000. Prakash, a 34-year-old assistant professor at Stanford, is currently working on refining the optics to improve the resolution from 700 nanometers, which is sharp enough for diagnosing African sleeping sickness, shistosomiasis, loiasis, and many other diarrheal diseases. Malaria and tuberculosis are next, he says.

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Foldscope, a Paper Microscope to Help Diagnose Disease

Foldscopes take about five minutes to fold into shape from a color-coded sheet. They require no external power, weigh less than two nickels, and are waterproof. They're also extremely robust, capable of surviving being trampled or dropped from a three-story building. If, for whatever reason, a part does fail, it is easily and cheaply replaced—all the components, lenses included, are modular. That also means that any Foldscope can be modified depending on the disease being diagnosed and lighting conditions. Attaching a bright LED can even transform the microscope into a projector for teaching children or training health workers.  For those accustomed to lab microscopes, a Foldscope might take some getting used to. Users insert samples prepared on standard glass slides and then focus by sliding paper tabs right or left with their thumbs. Prakash's lab received $100,000 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for initial development, and a four-year, $700,000 grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to distribute 10,000 Foldscopes to beta-testers who are chosen based on the scientific questions they'd like to study. Prakash is producing the first batch of 50,000 microscopes with a manufacturer of greeting cards using a traditional die-cutting process.  Foldscope isn't commercially available yet, though Prakash imagines a day when every child carries one, much as their parents keep ballpoint pens in their pockets. By seeing organisms invisible to the naked eye, children could develop a better understanding of how good hygiene plays a part in stemming the spread of disease. "Try explaining to a kid who has never seen anything microscopic why he should wash his hands," he says. "A microscope completely changes the dialogue of sanitation."

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