A New Kind Of 'Origami Robot' Can Literally Change Its Outer Body To Do Different Tasks!

Remember craft and origami lessons from primary school? Learning how to make a boat, flower, fish, plane and other complicated things, with just paper?

But it's 2017 now, and in keeping with times, MIT¡¯s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) team has built a new type of ¡°origami robot¡±. These are usually basic robots consisting of sheets of metal or plastic that fold into predetermined shapes when triggered, in order to walk, climb or even swim.

These kinds of robots have existed before, but CSAIL has taken the technology beyond what¡¯s been done so far. Now, they have a new robot that instead ¡°wears¡± these origami pieces to fashion new attributes for itself.

The core robot here being developed, called Primer, is actually more of a simple magnetic cube controlled remotely using magnetic fields. The Primer can then wear other origami exoskeletons, including one that walks, a glider, and another boat-shaped exoskeleton. Primer dons the origami piece when it¡¯s flat, and then uses heat to trigger it to fold itself into the predetermined shape. Think of it like Marvel hero Dr Strange¡¯s Cloak of Levitation.

It¡¯s all still very basic at this point, but the prototype is a proof-of-concept for all the untapped potential in robotics, particularly robots that can adapt to different environments and situations. The Primer is even capable of wearing multiple exoskeletons, combining all their capabilities, and then simply vibrating for a minute to get rid of the origami shell when needed.

¡°If we want robots to help us do things, it¡¯s not very efficient to have a different one for each task,¡± project lead Daniela Rus says. ¡°With this metamorphosis-inspired approach, we can extend the capabilities of a single robot by giving it different ¡®accessories¡¯ to use in different situations.¡±

¡°Why update a whole robot when you can just update one part of it?¡±