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The World's First Origami Folding Robot

Posted by michael on from the 1000-paper-cranes dept.

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.

12 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. It'll be easy to please the gods now! by strictnein · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So, how much will it cost for the robot to fold me 1000 paper cranes?
    Those videos are impressive. Unfortunately I'm sure that they'll be inaccessible shortly. The robot actually moves fairly quickly. Making both objects in less than a minute.

    Score one for the round eyes!

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    1. Re:It'll be easy to please the gods now! by ttldkns · · Score: 4, Interesting

      did you notice the clever editing of the vidoes?

      The part where after folding the first wing the paper is magically moved over to the other side in a split second?

      how precise do you reckon the initial starting position of the paper will be though?

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  2. laundry applications! by ejaw5 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With a bit (okay...a lot) of tweaking..we can all have a robot that folds laundry from the dryer!

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    $cat /dev/random > Sig
    1. Re:laundry applications! by TastesLikeChicken · · Score: 2, Interesting

      However, picking staticy laundry out of the dryer would be hard. Turning it right side out would be problematic too.

      The practical and exciting extrapolation of this machine is automated sewing. Imagine going into a shop, having your body scanned and having any clothing you wanted mailed to you, and having it all fit perfectly (I could order my pair of pants, two shirts, underwear and socks each year off the internet ahhh). (and we won't have to enslave women in third world countries to do it).

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  3. Hat, shmat... by anandamide · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When it can fold this , I'll be impressed!

  4. Yes, but.... by platypibri · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Can it fold money to find Hidden Images of 9-11?

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    Yeah, I guess I'm funny like that.
  5. Nice CNC Robot by MrRuslan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's very cool too see something like that.I work with a "Robot" like that evryday.It apears that evry movement of the machine has to be programmed in on each axis.In a way this is more advanced than the router I work on with only has 3 axis's.Do a goole search on CNC machines and you will see some interesting stuff that work like this robot.

  6. Kinematics by craXORjack · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.

    Kinematics is the Study of Motion not Mechanisms. I seem to remember from Engineering school doing problems that dealt with things like the Coriolis Effect and relative motion. I found it difficult personally because up to that time we had only faced triple integrals using Cartesian coordinates and suddenly we were expected to do all sorts of stuff with radial and sperical coordinate systems.

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  7. Not true Origami by Neil+Blender · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In the strictest rules of Origami, all folds must be done by hand. You cannot use any instrument to help you make a fold. So, there can only be psuedo-origami folding robots.

    1. Re:Not true Origami by Flexagon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't know about that. It seems to me that you could have a Turing test for origami: slip a piece of paper through a chute in a door, ask for a specific fold (crane; carp, note the caption: One uncut square!), wait for the result to slide back to you, then judge the results.

      This is a very interesting article. There is already a lot of work on mathematical and computational origami, some elsewhere on the site linked above. The robot is a nice extension. It will be even more interesting as more restrictions are removed over time.

  8. Freudian? by StateOfTheUnion · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Quoted from the article: "Human beings are mechanisms," Balkcom said. "We're very complicated mechanisms and we don't even understand ourselves."

    A gross oversimplication of humanity . . . were simply a mechanism that doesnt understand ourself? . . . isnt this a better description of a robot than a person? . . . sounds almost Freudian . . . perhaps this fellow feels more cofortable in the company of robots than people.

  9. Don't stop! by j_hirny · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Make a self-folding origami paper! Why should anyone need a robot to make an origami, when he can just buy a sheet of paper which will change to a swan or anything else?