PAPER structures created using the principles of origami could lead to cheap, easy-to-make robots that are very different from their traditional metal brethren.
George Whitesides and colleagues at Harvard University previously built squid-inspired robots with artificial muscles made of soft plastic and powered by pneumatic air pumps. Now they have combined this technique with paper to create a series of lightweight structures capable of bending and twisting, and even lifting heavy weights.
Paper is flexible, but unlike plastic it does not stretch, making it useful for forming rigid structures when a paper balloon is filled with air. Whitesides’s team exploited this idea by folding paper into a bellows-like shape and embedding it in flexible plastic. When inflated, the paper extended straight upwards, creating a small cylinder weighing just over 8 grams that could lift a 1 kilogram weight. Gluing different parts of the bellows together made it inflate into a U shape or twist as it extended (Advanced Functional Materials, ).
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These simple designs could be refined to create soft-bodied robots that might provide extra hands for surgeons or handle delicate objects such as eggs or fruit.
