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The World's First Origami Folding Robot

Roland Piquepaille writes "Devin Balkcom, a Carnegie Mellon graduate student in robotics, has built the world's first origami-folding robot as the subject of his thesis. Origami, the geometry of paper folding, looks simple when you're a kid. But it's actually quite challenging to design a robot to do it. Movements are quite complex, and paper, because it is flexible, is difficult to be manipulated by a robot. This news release says that the project uses kinematics, the study of mechanisms, to determine how folding is done and how paper can be treated as a flexible and rigid material. You'll find more details and references in this overview, including some frames extracted from videos showing the robot at work." Balkcom's website has movies, information and a couple of academic papers.

3 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. on the plus side... by wo1verin3 · · Score: 5, Funny

    they can't patent this since prior art exists. The Bender unit far exceeds capabilities of the folding unit.

  2. My printer manages by earthforce_1 · · Score: 4, Funny


    To bend fold and multilate paper with surprising regularity.

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    My rights don't need management.
  3. Mad magazine by spineboy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Excellent!.. I can use it to see the hidden joke on the back page of Mad magazine!

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    ..........FULL STOP.