Paper That Folds by Itself to Plane or Boat- It is No Magic, Watch it Happens

Have you seen a paper fold itself into a plane or boat. That is what the scientists at Harvard and MIT invented - a programmable matter by folding.

It might remind you of Origami. In fact the program relied on the ancient art of origami. In the video below you will see how a single thin sheet composed of interconnected triangular sections could transform itself into a boat or plane-shape - all without the help of skilled fingers.
The sheet, a thin composite of rigid tiles and elastomer joints, is studded with thin foil actuators (motorized switches) and flexible electronics.

The senior authors on the study were Robert J. Wood, associate professor of electrical engineering at the Harvard and Daniela Rus, a professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at MIT. The fancy folding techniques were inspired in part by the work of co-author Erik Dermaine, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and one of the world's most recognized experts on computational origami. The recent was published in the most recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, also known as PNAS.

"Smart sheets are Origami Robots that will make any shape on demand for their user," says Rus. "A big achievement was discovering the theoretical foundations and universality of folding and fold planning, which provide the brain and the decision making system for the smart sheet."

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This news item was adapted from the science news online publication SciGuru.com