Session: 12-18-01: Functional Origami and Kirigami-inspired Structures and Metamaterials

Paper Number: 95289

95289 - Origami-Based Metamaterials: Mechanics and Devices 

Origami, the ancient paper art that was originated from East Asia, has drawn increasing attention among mathematicians, physicists, artists, and engineers, who have utilized origami as a tool to transform simple, two-dimensional thin-film materials into complex, three-dimensional structures. These origami structures exhibit fascinating properties, such as shape-morphing, flexibility, scalability, reconfigurability, multi-stability, and stiffness/Poisson’s ratio tunability. These versatile functions have prompted origami structures to be applied in many fields, including flexible electronics, medical devices, spacecrafts, transforming architectures, metamaterials, and of special interest here, robotics. Origami robots, whose morphology and function are generated by folding, are robots consisting of discrete facets and creases. Compared with conventional rigid robots, origami robots exhibit inherent compliance through their foldable structures, and simplify the design and fabrication processes by avoiding assembly of machinery parts through folding. On the other hand, compared with soft robots, origami robots can be constructed with rigid materials without losing their shape-morphing capability, exhibiting soft-rigid hybrid structures and functions. In addition to reconfigurable robotic sheets with repeating units, there are several recent studies focused on cylindrical origami robots. The cylindrical structures make origami robots more stereoscopic, similar to soft actuators and structural members in rigid robots. Moreover, the cylindrical structures allow robots to be actuated globally, rather than actuated locally by built-in joint actuators.

 

Three basic motion types, namely contraction/extension, bending, and torsion, as well as their combinations, constitute the primary locomotion of creatures in nature, and the tireless pursuit to mimic these simple to complex motion types is the focal point in the field of robotics. Soft actuators with the inherent compliance and the ability for safer human-robot interactions have been drawn increasing attention in this regard, though the existing designs typically exhibit unimodal motions, such as contraction, bending, twisting, which hinder them from achieving motions with multiple degrees-of-freedom (DoF), essential for complex tasks. Superposition of these unimodal motions connected by a series provides a straightforward means for complex spatial motions, albeit the inevitable complicity in both single motion trajectory and controls led by the simple function of each individual actuator. It is therefore desired to develop versatile soft actuators, enabling richer motion types and more flexible motion trajectories. Thus, actuators with multimodal modes emerged as an active direction in the field to achieve coupled motion types (e.g., coupled torsion and contraction), contraction/extension-torsion, torsion-bending, extension-bending, contraction-bending mode and more complex contraction-bending-torsion mode. Among the methods such as parallel spaced multiple chambers, elastic sheet with kirigami pattern, local constraint, origami-inspired designs, such as Miura and Yoshimura, and Kresling origami, represent a distinctive method as it has unique merits in actuation, including high deformation ratio, multi-stability, and manipulative stiffness. However, the existing origami-based actuators did not achieve decoupled basic motion types or more complicated deformations. For example, the Kresling pattern has an intrinsic coupled contraction and torsion mode but cannot decouple these two, or perform pure bending deformation.

 

In this talk, we will present a modified Kresling origami pattern to achieve all-purpose deformation mode.

Presenting Author: Hanqing Jiang Westlake University

Presenting Author Biography: Hanqing Jiang is a Professor of Engineering at Westlake University in China. Before joining Westlake University in June 2021, he was a faculty member of Mechanical Engineering at Arizona State University from 2006 to 2021. His current research interests include the origami and kirigami based mechanical metamaterials, mechanics of lithium-metal batteries, and unconventional electronics. He has published 5 book chapters and more than 140 peer-reviewed journal papers.

Authors:

Hanqing Jiang Westlake University