It all started with a flat sheet of paper.
No one knows how the ancient art of origami began.
But centuries ago in ancient Japan,
they brought paper to life. How could they imagine
that the paper crane and dragon would transform modern-day science
and take flight in a new century. With roots in the 16th century,
origami reemerged in the nineteen fifties.
As a revolutionary Japanese artist,
Akira Yoshizawa inspired a new generation
of not only artists but also scientists.
You had folks who took up origami as a hobby,
but were also in the scientific world asking the questions that mathematicians
and scientists do.
How can I describe this concept
mathematically? But also
mathematical design techniques that you develop can be used for
art in for technology. So people could turn right around and use those same
techniques to design folding structures whose purpose was not aesthetic
but was function. There's been literally centuries
of work by these artists doing prototypes in a very cheap material a paper, and
discovered motions that we would not have discovered using traditional
engineering approaches.
Once they understood the mathematics behind the art,
engineers could you use origami designs and movement
to solve problems. In engineering terms
origami is a compliant mechanism. So a compliant mechanism is the
device gets its motion from things like bending and deflection instead of hinges and bearings.
Origami then by nature is compliant because all of those folding hinges
are relying on the flexibility in the paper. Although many origami designs
are hundred of years old, engineers must adapt paper designs
two more rigid and durable materials, using basic folds
and abstract forms as inspiration.
Some of the devices it's harder to see the origami. For example in one device,
the origami helped us understand how to get the motion.
But if you were to see the actual device, you wouldn't actually see
much of the origami. It's 3D printed out titanium.
Folding transformations from small to large
in particular, are very useful ideas, especially in space research.
You have something that quite often needs to be big,
very often needs to be flat or sheet like, but the only way of getting it into space
is to send it up in a rocket,
and rockets have very limited space. And the nice thing with a lot of origami, is you can make it very compact
for launch and as you get into space it can deploy and be very large.
I'm working on an origami inspired deployable solar array
for spacecraft. The spacecraft would be inside
a rocket, like an Atlas 5 rocket, and the solar array would wrap around the
outside of the spacecraft.
It would be all folded up compactly and then launched into space and deployed.
By using origami principles, we can get a much larger array into space by stowing it compactly during launch
and then opening it up once we're in space.
Because mathematical formulas can be scaled to any size,
origami inspired designs are useful
in many disciplines, including electronics and medicine.
Based on kirigami, a variation of origami utilized in pop-up books,
this four micrometer thick nano-injector
is a microscopic compliant mechanism
developed for gene therapy to deliver DNA cells.
400 nan-injectors could fit onto a single
one centimeter square computer chip.
I think the biggest thing to learn from this kind research is that you can find
inspiration for designs from anything.
If you're open to inspiration from any of these sources then your creativity
is not limited.
It all started with a flat sheet of paper.
Now to do origami inspired design,
it has been transformed, reimagined,
elevated but still reminiscent of an ancient art form.
Origami having deep roots as an ancient art would think that as a field
of exploration, it would have been played out long ago.
But the opposite is true. It's as
vibrant and growing as ever. As we look to the future
there are no limits on the horizon either artistically
or now in this new technological area in the applications
of origami inspired design.