A new “zippered tube” origami configuration makes paper structures stiff enough to hold weight yet able to fold flat for easy shipping and storage.
Origami structures would be useful in many engineering and everyday applications, such as a robotic arm that could reach out and scrunch up, a construction crane that could fold to pick up or deliver a load, or pop-up furniture.
Study author Glaucio Paulino, professor at Georgia Tech, sees particular potential for quick-assembling emergency shelters, bridges, and other infrastructure in the wake of a natural disaster.
“Origami became more of an objective for engineering and a science just in the last five years or so,” says coauthor Evgueni Filipov of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“A lot of it was driven by space exploration, to be able to launch structures compactly and deploy them in space. But we’re starting to see how it has potential for a lot of different fields of engineering. You could prefabricate something in a factory, ship it compactly, and deploy it on site.”
