Origami Robot: A Self Folding Paper Robot With an Electrothermal Actuator Created by Printing
A piece of paper has many useful characteristics; it is affordable, lightweight, thin, strong, and highly absorbent. These features allow inexpensive and flexible devices to be fabricated easily and rapidly. We have proposed a new field, "paper mechatronics," which merges printed robotics and paper electronics, and to realize electronic and mechanical systems by printing. Herein, we develop a method to print an actuator and a structure on a sheet of paper. A trilayer electrothermal actuator is printed to activate a printed robot. The paper self folds along the printed pattern to form the three dimensional (3 D) structure of the robot body. We also investigate important factors necessary to develop a printed robot. Experiments, including finite element analysis (FEA) confirm our bimetal modeling assumption for the printed actuator and improve the locomotive ability. The key factors in self folding are paper thickness and humidity. Our findings can improve the reliability of printed robot designs. A self folding A7 sized paper robot demonstrates locomotion at 10 mm per step.
IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics