It all started with a flat sheet of paper.
No one knows how the ancient art of
origami began.
But centuries ago in ancient Japan,
they brought paper to life. How could they
imagine
that the paper crane and dragon would
transform modern-day science
and take flight in a new century. With
roots in the 16th century,
origami reemerged in the nineteen fifties.
As a revolutionary Japanese artist,
Akira Yoshizawa inspired a new generation
of not only artists but also
scientists.
You had folks who took up origami as
a hobby,
but were also in the scientific world
asking the questions that mathematicians
and scientists do.
How can I describe this concept
mathematically? But also
mathematical design techniques that you
develop can be used for
art in for technology. So people could
turn right around and use those same
techniques to design folding structures
whose purpose was not aesthetic
but was function. There's been literally
centuries
of work by these artists doing prototypes in
a very cheap material a paper, and
discovered motions that we would not
have discovered using traditional
engineering approaches.
Once they understood the mathematics
behind the art,
engineers could you use origami
designs and movement
to solve problems. In engineering terms
origami is a compliant mechanism.
So a compliant mechanism is the
device gets its motion from things like bending
and deflection instead of hinges and bearings.
Origami then by nature is compliant
because all of those folding hinges
are relying on the flexibility in the
paper. Although many origami designs
are hundred of years old, engineers must
adapt paper designs
two more rigid and durable materials,
using basic folds
and abstract forms as inspiration.
Some of the devices it's harder to see the
origami. For example in one device,
the origami helped us understand how
to get the motion.
But if you were to see the actual device,
you wouldn't actually see
much of the origami. It's 3D printed out
titanium.
Folding transformations from small to large
in particular, are very useful ideas,
especially in space research.
You have something that quite often
needs to be big,
very often needs to be flat or sheet like, but
the only way of getting it into space
is to send it up in a rocket,
and rockets have very limited space. And the nice thing with a lot of origami, is you can make it very compact
for launch and as you get into space it
can deploy and be very large.
I'm working on an origami inspired
deployable solar array
for spacecraft. The spacecraft
would be inside
a rocket, like an Atlas 5 rocket, and the
solar array would wrap around the
outside of the spacecraft.
It would be all folded up compactly and then launched into space and deployed.
By using origami principles, we can get a much larger
array into space by stowing it compactly during launch
and then opening it up once we're in space.
Because mathematical formulas can be scaled to any size,
origami inspired designs are useful
in many disciplines, including
electronics and medicine.
Based on kirigami, a variation of origami utilized in
pop-up books,
this four micrometer thick nano-injector
is a microscopic compliant mechanism
developed for gene therapy to deliver
DNA cells.
400 nan-injectors could fit onto a single
one centimeter square computer chip.
I think the biggest thing to learn from
this kind research is that you can find
inspiration for designs from anything.
If you're open to inspiration
from any of these sources then your creativity
is not limited.
It all started with a flat sheet of paper.
Now to do origami inspired design,
it has been transformed, reimagined,
elevated but still reminiscent of an ancient art form.
Origami having deep roots as an ancient art would think
that as a field
of exploration, it would have been
played out long ago.
But the opposite is true. It's as
vibrant and growing as ever. As we look
to the future
there are no limits on the horizon
either artistically
or now in this new technological
area in the applications
of origami inspired design.
