The World's First Origami Folding Robot 126
Roland Piquepaille writes "Devin Balkcom, a Carnegie Mellon graduate student in robotics, has built the world's first origami-folding robot as the subject of his thesis. Origami, the geometry of paper folding, looks simple when you're a kid. But it's actually quite challenging to design a robot to do it. Movements are quite complex, and paper, because it is flexible, is difficult to be manipulated by a robot. This news release says that the project uses kinematics, the study of mechanisms, to determine how folding is done and how paper can be treated as a flexible and rigid material. You'll find more details and references in this overview, including some frames extracted from videos showing the robot at work." Balkcom's website has movies, information and a couple of academic papers.
It'll be easy to please the gods now! (Score:5, Interesting)
Those videos are impressive. Unfortunately I'm sure that they'll be inaccessible shortly. The robot actually moves fairly quickly. Making both objects in less than a minute.
Score one for the round eyes!
Re:It'll be easy to please the gods now! (Score:3, Informative)
A minute a piece, not combined.
Hat: ~55 seconds
Airplane: ~35 seconds
Re:It'll be easy to please the gods now! (Score:2, Informative)
those servers look sketchy... (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:those servers look sketchy... (Score:5, Informative)
(Score:2, Insightful)
???????
More like (Score:5, Funny)
Check the link:
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~devin/
That is the CMU's School of Computer Science primary web servers. They have more bandwidth than the whole of slashdot, especially with school on vacation. And the servers are likely to be a server farm. It is not going down easily.
Re:those servers look sketchy... (Score:4, Funny)
True, but if we all try really hard, maybe we can do it. C'mon everybody! Click! Reload! Click! Reload! Faster!
Re:those servers look sketchy... (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is that not only are the pipes quite fast, CERT is based at CMU -- and those are the folks doing some of the main research on identifying and avoiding DDoSes.
Re:It'll be easy to please the gods now! (Score:5, Interesting)
The part where after folding the first wing the paper is magically moved over to the other side in a split second?
how precise do you reckon the initial starting position of the paper will be though?
Re:It'll be easy to please the gods now! (Score:2)
Watch the hat video. There are no interuptions or magic moving.
Re:It'll be easy to please the gods now! (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.full
Re:It'll be easy to please the gods now! (Score:1)
I'll stay with cisco, thankyouverymuch.
(j/k, of course i know what a cnc router is.)
Re:It'll be easy to please the gods now! (Score:1)
Read the fantastic article:
The movies are in real time, but the repositioning of the paper has been edited out of the paper airplane folding. The folding is open loop (the position of the paper is not sensed), so the accuracy is much less than what a human could achieve.
Re:It'll be easy to please the gods now! (Score:3, Funny)
HAT (Score:2)
Re:It's cool... (Score:1)
on the plus side... (Score:5, Funny)
Bite my ... (Score:1)
laundry applications! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:laundry applications! (Score:2)
Re:laundry applications! (Score:2)
Re:laundry applications! (Score:2, Interesting)
The practical and exciting extrapolation of this machine is automated sewing. Imagine going into a shop, having your body scanned and having any clothing you wanted mailed to you, and having it all fit perfectly (I could order my pair of pants, two shirts, underwear and socks each year off the internet ahhh). (and we won't have to enslave women in third world countries to do it).
Re:laundry applications! (Score:3, Informative)
No, not yet (Score:1)
Re:laundry origami (Score:1)
Well.. actually maybe not *that* much tweaking.. check out this video. I swear.. the japanese must be 20 yrs ahead of the rest of the world.
t-shirt origami [guusbosman.nl]
damnnn......
Old Technology (Score:2, Funny)
Seriously, though, the precision and delicate nature needed to fold paper makes this a great technical achievement.
My printer manages (Score:5, Funny)
To bend fold and multilate paper with surprising regularity.
Re:My printer manages (Score:2)
But a really neat printer would fold and mutilate on command while following directions!
Re:My printer manages (Score:2)
Re:My printer manages (Score:2)
Darn (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Darn (Score:2)
I was expecting it to be a robot made from origami, not one that makes origami.
Re:Darn (Score:1)
But is there a robot... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:But is there a robot... (Score:1, Offtopic)
Hat, shmat... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hat, shmat... (Score:1)
Re:Hat, shmat... (Score:2)
Btw those are all folded from a single uncut piece of paper, although the last one is 'sealed with starch or matt lacquer' according to the artist(Paul Jackson)'s website...
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Oooooooh. (Score:2)
I am the mountain fold robot. I make Mt. Fuji.
We are here to protect you.
Valley fold will protect you from the terrible secret of space. Do you have stairs in your House?
Yes, but.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yes, but.... (Score:3, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords (Score:3, Funny)
But... (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.origamiboulder.com/
How long to fold a copy of itself? (Score:1)
I know there is a joke in here somewhere involving a word problem...
If it could lick stamps ... (Score:3, Funny)
1. Print -> Fold -> Lick -> Stamp
2. Goto 1.
A small step for robotics, a giant leap for Snail-mail spamming :)
Re:If it could lick stamps ... (Score:2)
Hm (Score:1)
Sounds familiar (Score:2)
Nice CNC Robot (Score:5, Interesting)
Link to a site with industrial CNC machines (Score:2, Informative)
This company makes some nice CNC machinery for woodworking that work just like this.Anything you can draw in 3d with cad you can make on one of these.
I work on a machine almost identical to this one
http://www.biesseusa.com/biesseusa/product/biesse
and some of the details on these doors are made with a CNC machine like this
http://www.narvakitchens.com/Doors/index.html
Anyone else read it wrong? (Score:1, Funny)
Mad magazine (Score:5, Funny)
things you'll never hear (Score:1)
"Dad why did you take me to a gay Origami factory?"
"I don't know."
Kinematics (Score:4, Interesting)
Kinematics is the Study of Motion not Mechanisms. I seem to remember from Engineering school doing problems that dealt with things like the Coriolis Effect and relative motion. I found it difficult personally because up to that time we had only faced triple integrals using Cartesian coordinates and suddenly we were expected to do all sorts of stuff with radial and sperical coordinate systems.
Re:Kinematics (Score:2)
The branch of mechanics that studies the motion of a body or a system of bodies without consideration given to its mass or the forces acting on it.
Mechanisms are defined as (dictionary.com [reference.com] again):
An instrument or a process, physical or mental, by which something is done or comes into being: "The mechanism of oral learning is largely that of continuous repetition" (T.G.E. Powell).
To be quite honest with you the press release doesn't seem to make
Not true Origami (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not true Origami (Score:1)
Aren't our hands just a different type of instrument? Or must it be organic.
Re:Not true Origami (Score:2)
Re:Not true Origami (Score:1)
Uhh why, the robot uses its "hand", so it could be origami. Or at least robogami or something...
Re:Not true Origami (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know about that. It seems to me that you could have a Turing test for origami: slip a piece of paper through a chute in a door, ask for a specific fold (crane; carp [langorigami.com], note the caption: One uncut square!), wait for the result to slide back to you, then judge the results.
This is a very interesting article. There is already a lot of work on mathematical and computational origami, some elsewhere on the site linked above. The robot is a nice extension. It will be even more interesting as more restric
An art... (Score:2)
Mislead by the title... (Score:1, Offtopic)
My how origami has evolved... (Score:3, Funny)
Now they've come up with a way to fold paper into robot that folds clothes? Amazing!
milk cartons... (Score:4, Insightful)
What about pop-up books?
This is a nice student project, but I don't see that there's anything unprecedented here.
Re:milk cartons... (Score:1)
Freudian? (Score:3, Interesting)
A gross oversimplication of humanity . . . were simply a mechanism that doesnt understand ourself? . . . isnt this a better description of a robot than a person? . . . sounds almost Freudian . . . perhaps this fellow feels more cofortable in the company of robots than people.
Re:Freudian? (Score:2)
Re:Freudian? (Score:2)
Sorry if reality gets your down.
>isnt this a better description of a robot than a person?
An autonomous working AI would be the same as a human once you drop all the meta-physical garbage. Its materialism all the way.
Also, all analogies are flawed to a certain degree as they are always comparing apples and oranges, some are simply better comparisions than others.
Re:Freudian? (Score:2)
Don't stop! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Don't stop! (Score:3, Funny)
Nexus-6 (Score:2, Funny)
It's too bad she won't live, but then again, who does?
Robots fold you! (Score:2, Funny)
Sorry, I hadda do it.
YES!!! (Score:2, Funny)
Best watch out. I kinda feel like writing an interactive virtual reality edutainment tea ceremony that would put the most refined of geishas to shame.
Re:YES!!!-not geishas (Score:2)
So, entertainment not edutainment.
In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
FAH (Score:2, Funny)
In other news... (Score:1)
I wonder if the robot prefers Letters or A4 format?
sig(h)
Only one more year until (Score:2, Funny)
think of the possibilities
i never have to tie nots in balloons again
Instant folding (Score:1)
Yes! (Score:2)
Worst. Paper. Airplane. Ever. (Score:2)
Origabot! (Score:2)
Oh, nuts (Score:2)
I suppose the military could make a really big robot that folds the enemy on the front lines.
Hmm. That all sounds a bit too bitter.
the real problem.... (Score:1)
OH! The headline has a hyphen... (Score:1)
Cool! Autobot or Decepticon?
Origami, the geometry of paper folding, looks simple when you're a kid. But it's actually quite challenging to design a robot to do it.
Phooey.
Seriously, though: wouldn't an origami Megatron or StarScream just ROCK?
not world's first (Score:1)
Is it just me (Score:1)
Hmph... I am dubious. (Score:2)
That robot looks AMAZINGLY like a pair of hands to me.
Guess I should watch the videos
(Go to the wesite and LOOK, expecting a pic of the robot.)
To those who are confused, this was a probably lame attempt at a joke.
SMF - Symmetric Multifolding (Score:1)
Super, super cool. (Score:1)
Re:Some Videos of the robot in action (Score:1)