Scientists have created a flexible robot inspired by origami.
Two research groups showed off designs of the origami-inspired wheel system that lets a robot shape-shift and climb a flight of stairs with help from its wheels, according to The Daily Mail.
One group of researchers from Seoul National University in South Korea used the "magic ball pattern," a traditional technique for making folded paper spheres, to design the robot wheel.
The wheel deforms its shape in order to change its radius. A wheel with a large radius does a better job of climbing over things, and a wheel with a small radius can squeeze under things, Discovery News reported. The wheel can deform with hooks from a diameter of 55 millimeters to a diameter of 120 millimeters.
The group in Seoul, led by Professor Kyu-Jin Cho, teamed up with scientists at Harvard Microrobotics Lab, who helped make the origami robot able to shrink and expand automatically.Team members aimed to design a robot capable of being fast and strong, unlike most robots with fixed-sized wheels and gears that can only be either quick or strong. Having the ability to expand and shrink in size allows the origami robot to be both by "deciding" automatically how big it should be for its tasks. The robot's system lets it accomplish different goals, such as climbing over items and pulling objects.
"No adjustment is necessary," the researchers said. "If the origami wheels have too much load on them to rotate, they stall, and as the wheel hubs continue to turn, the wheels collapse, which increases their torque until they can move."
Cho, Dae-Young Lee, Ji-Suk Kim, Jae-Jun Park, and Sa-Reum presented the wheel system at this year's IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Hong Kong.
When dealing with heavy loads, the wheels can decrease in diameter until they reach the maximum size that will let them rotate smoothly, The Daily Mail reported.
The researchers believe the wheel's ability to expand will one day make their new system useful for interplanetary rovers.
