For a polymathic backyard scientist, making robots could be one of the recreational activities provided if all the hardware necessary aren’t that expensive and are readily available. But this non-availability could be the thing of the past as scientists find a trailblazing new technique to make a robot out of paper with just inkjet printers with the idea taken from origami, and that too – 2D printer, not 3D printer. So technically if you have a printer, you can make a robot.
Two MIT scientists, Daniela Rus and Ankur Mehta explain the system of designing in the paper entitled “An End-to-End System for Designing Mechanical Structures for Print-and-fold Robots “.
The procedure involves a software which can exscind a two-dimensional pattern to any user’s choice and use of “cheap and easily available software and hardware tools and raw materials, making it accessible to a casual hobbyist.”
The only hardest part of the process is the use of Python scripts that array the end-to-end process of designing, and it also makes abstraction of two-dimensional fold patterns from three-dimensional shape possible.
The creators were awarded $10 million by the National Science Foundation as a funding. [MIT via Inventors Spot]
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This sure is fun but I doubt if I can make it right. But I’m willing to try it though.
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This looks likes tons of fun, but one needs to have both hands (I only have my clumsy lef), and even if I had both hands at my complete disposal, I think I’d still be all thumbs! 😆 I’d still like to try it, though!
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Thanks for the comment. 🙂
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WHAT FUN !!!!! 😀
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😀
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