Research: Robots and Origami

Featured Research: Robotic Origami Folding

Balkcom, Mason, Demaine, and Demaine

Thin materials like sheet metal, paper, and cardboard are lightweight, inexpensive, and can be stored and shipped in bulk. Folding allows the construction of semi-rigid 3-D structures, including fast-food containers, paper bags, and file cabinets. Folding can also allow a single large surface or chain to be stored in a small volume; motivating examples include car airbags, space-telescope mirrors, and proteins. Finally, folding allows reconfiguration, without the need for disassembly and reassembly.

We have built the first origami-folding robot (left), capable of folding a paper hat, paper airplane, and paper cup. We have also analyzed more complicated folding techniques; work with Erik and Martin Demaine questions whether ordinary paper shopping bags can be mathematically folded.

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Movies: Robotic Origami Folding

QuickTime video of Devin Balkcom's robot folding a paper hat. (14 MB)

QuickTime video of the robot folding a paper airplane. (8 MB)

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Folding Manipulation and Robot Origami

Devin J. Balkcom, Erik Demaine, and Martin Demaine. Folding paper bags.
In Annual Workshop on Computational Geometry, November 2004. pdf.

Devin J. Balkcom. Robotic origami folding.
Ph.D. Thesis, published as Carnegie Mellon University RI TR 04-43, August 2004. pdf.

Devin J. Balkcom and Matthew T. Mason. Introducing robotic origami folding.
In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pages 3245-3250, April 2004. pdf.