It’s the kind of thing that people like Sheldon, Leonard, Howard and Raj from the popular show The Big Bang Theory would love.
Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) are developing a system that lets you design your robot in minutes, 3D-print it and assemble it in as little as four hours.
Presented in a new paper, the system is called “Interactive Robogami,” a mix between the words “robot” and “origami,” the ancient Japanese art of creating complex shapes by simply folding paper.
“Designing robots usually requires expertise that only mechanical engineers and roboticists have,” Adriana Schulz, PhD student and co-lead author of the paper, said in a statement. “What’s exciting here is that we’ve created a tool that allows a casual user to design their own robot by giving them this expert knowledge.”
The process to design and print your own robot works in two phases. First, users design their robot in front of a screen. Thanks to a preset library, they can choose from over 50 different bodies, wheels, legs and other elements. Most importantly, in this phase they can also test if their design is actually possible, analyzing factors such as speed and stability.
Once designed, the robot is then fabricated. The design is printed as flat faces connected at joints, which users have to manually fold and assemble in the final shape (hence, the origami reference).
In the following video, Schultz and PhD graduate Cynthia Sung show how the system works. There’s also a bunch of adorable origami-inspired tiny robots performing tasks that you should really, really check out (my favorite is the little locomotive, by the way).
While the current version of the system focuses on designs that can walk, the team hopes that in the future, the robots can take flight.
The paper, which is being published in the new issue of the International Journal of Robotics Research, was co-led by Sung alongside MIT professors Wojciech Matusik and Daniela Rus. The other co-authors include PhD student Andrew Spielberg, former master’s student Wei Zhao, former undergraduate Robin Cheng, and Columbia University professor Eitan Grinspun.
