Leaf-like Origami with Bistability for Self-Adaptive Grasping Motions
This work addresses the need for autonomous and versatile robotic grasping systems, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing origami and bistability concepts.
The paper tackled the problem of creating self-adaptive grasping motions without external power by developing a leaf-like origami structure with bistability, demonstrating successful object capture in a paper prototype.
The leaf-like origami structure was inspired by geometric patterns found in nature, exhibiting unique transitions between open and closed shapes. With a bistable energy landscape, leaf-like origami is able to replicate the autonomous grasping of objects observed in biological systems like the Venus flytrap. We show uniform grasping motions of the leaf-like origami, as well as various non-uniform grasping motions which arise from its multi-transformable nature. Grasping motions can be triggered with high tunability due to the structure's bistable energy landscape. We demonstrate the self-adaptive grasping motion by dropping a target object onto our paper prototype, which does not require an external power source to retain the capture of the object. We also explore the non-uniform grasping motions of the leaf-like structure by selectively controlling the creases, which reveals various unique grasping configurations that can be exploited for versatile, autonomous, and self-adaptive robotic operations.