Yue Hao

Yue Hao, Peiwen J. Ma, Huaishu Peng et al.

For centuries, human civilizations devised metal forming techniques to make tools and items; yet, customized metal forming remains costly and intricate. Laser-forming origami} (lasergami) is a metal forming process where a laser beam cuts and folds a planar metal sheet to form a three-dimensional (3D) shape. Designing foldable structures formable by lasers, however, has long been a trial-and-error practice that requires significant mental effort and hinders the possibility of creating practical structures. This work demonstrates for the first time that lasergami can form a freeform set of metallic structures previously believed to have been impossible to be laser-formed. This technological breakthrough is enabled by new computational origami methods that imitate flower blooming and optimize laser folding instructions. Combined with new ideas that address laser line of sight and minimize fabrication energy, we report a low-cost manufacturing framework that can be readily adopted by hobbyists and professionals alike.

Yue Hao, Weilin Guan, Edwin A Peraza Hernandez et al.

Designing a robot or structure that can fold itself into a target shape is a process that involves challenges originated from multiple sources. For example, the designer of rigid self-folding robots must consider foldability from geometric and kinematic aspects to avoid self-intersection and undesired deformations. Recent works have shown success in estimating foldability of a design using robot motion planners. However, many foldable structures are actuated using physically coupled reactions (i.e., folding originated from thermal, chemical, or electromagnetic loads). Therefore, a reliable foldability analysis must consider additional constraints that resulted from these critical phenomena. This work investigates the idea of efficiently incorporating computationally expensive physics simulation within the folding motion planner to provide a better estimation of the foldability. In this paper, we will use laser forming origami as an example to demonstrate the benefits of considering the properties beyond geometry. We show that the design produced by the proposed method can be folded more efficiently.