When people are dropped into the most dangerous of conditions – as when disaster strikes, or during exploration of another planet – they generally have the highest number of needs and the lowest amount of resources and time.
Should they simply give up? Curse the earthquake or typhoon, or the space agency that sent them to Mars? Or should they take inspiration from an ancient Japanese art of paper-folding to 3D-print all their solutions on-site?
If you ask Akib Zaman, an MIT electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) graduate student and lead author of “One String to Pull Them All: Fast Assembly of Curved Structures from Flat Auxetic Linkages,” he’s going to tell you to go with origami.
Well, correction: he’ll explain that the method he as his co-authors developed doesn’t work like origami (which involves nothing but paper), but like kirigami, which can include cutting and gluing (or in this case, attached string), to produce auxetic devices – that is, structures that thicken when stretched and thin when compressed.
When an earthquake, hurricane, or other calamity strikes, people need immediate medical care, and can’t wait for supplies to be hauled from vast distances. Now, they may not have to wait if they can access the method that Zaman developed with his MIT co-authors and fellow graduate student Jacqueline Aslarus; postdoctoral student Jiaji Li; Associate Professor Stefanie Mueller, leader of the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Engineering Group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); and senior author Mina Konaković Luković, an assistant professor and leader of the Algorithmic Design Group in CSAIL.
Using their approach, people can 3D-print small or large sections of connected tiles that, after a tug on a single string or cable, transform from flat to almost any desired shape, including splints, bodyshell parts for foldable robots, igloos, and massive structures. And it doesn’t matter which fabrication method people can access: 3D printing, plastic molding, computer numerical control (CNC) milling that slices and drills wood, or related methods. However, a multi-material 3D printer would be especially helpful, because these kirigamoids require hinges from a material that can flex, and tiles from materials that remain rigid.
Watch the following amazing video (it starts slowly, but be patient) to see not only the 3D printing of these kirigamoids, but a robot pulling the string, and potential massive buildings whose cable will need a construction crane to pull.
While Zaman and his colleagues aren’t the first people to use kirigami for industrial design, previous efforts have required multiple steps and highly specialized equipment. Even worse, folding them back to flat-form following use has been difficult or impossible. “Because of these challenges, deployable structures tend to be manually designed and quite simple, geometrically,” explains Zaman. “But if we can create more complex geometries, while simplifying the actuation mechanism, we could enhance the capabilities of these deployables.”
The MIT team’s solution is automated conversion of any 3D shape into a flattened tile formation in which each tile connects to its neighbors by hinges at each corner. That approach allows the structure to “inflate” or “deflate” with the pulling of a single string. Following 3D geometric encoding into auxetic tiles, the algorithm determines the smallest number of points – and the shortest path with the least friction – for the string to inflate the structure. Unlike previous such pop-up structures, the MIT system can be easily “popped-down” for easy storage and low-cost, simple transport for re-use, reducing waste of key resources.
“Our method makes it easy for the user,” says Zaman. “All they have to do is input their design, and our algorithm automatically takes care of the rest. Then all the user needs to do is to fabricate the tiles exactly the way it has been computed by the algorithm.”
The solutions that kirigamoids solve don’t have to be dramatic ones, when even seemingly mundane ones can still save people from trauma and even death. For instance, some people won’t use bicycle helmets because of the inconvenience of locking them to their bikes or carrying them through school or the office. But a kirigamoid bicycle helmet can simply fold flat for easy storage inside a backpack, briefcase, or desk drawer.
Because size isn’t a limiting factor for kirigamoids, designers can create not only tools, furniture, and buildings, but even injectable medical devices. Future experimentation will examine optimal hinge strength and ideal cable thickness, as well as self-inflating kirigamoids for fully automated use in inconvenient, remote, or dangerous locations.
So, while the future may not always fit in your pocket, it will probably be able to fit in a drawer, slide under your bed, or leaned against the wall of your garage (on Mars).
Source: MIT
