Rigid foldability and mountain-valley crease assignments of square-twist origami pattern

Rigid foldability allows an origami pattern to fold about crease lines without twisting or stretching component panels. It enables folding of rigid materials, facilitating the design of foldable structures. Recent study shows that rigid foldability is affected by the mountain-valley crease (M-V) assignment of an origami pattern. In this paper, we investigate the rigid foldability of the square-twist origami pattern with diverse M-V assignments by a kinematic method based on the motion transmission path. Four types of square-twist origami patterns are analyzed, among which two are found rigidly foldable, while the other two are not. The explicit kinematic equations of the rigid cases are derived based on the kinematic equivalence between the rigid origami pattern and the closed-loop network of spherical 4R linkages. We also convert a non-rigid pattern into a rigid one by introducing an extra crease. The kinematic analysis of the modified pattern reveals an interesting bifurcation behaviour. This work not only helps to deepen our understanding on the rigid foldability of origami patterns and its relationship with the M-V assignments, but also provides us an effective way to create more rigidly foldable origami patterns from non-rigid ones. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Active origami platforms for human-robot interactions

Frédéric Henri Vaskin Giraud

Robots are employed to assist humans in lengthy, challenging, and repetitive tasks. However, the fields of rehabilitation, haptics, and assistive robotics have shown a significant need to support and interact with people in their everyday life. To facilitate these further needs, robots must overcome constraints in compactness, degrees of freedom (DoF), and mechanical performance. However, developing a robot with these characteristics is challenging for conventional mechanics. First, creating a meso-scale device requires the assembly of small components, which is laborious and increases manufacturing cost, time, and complexity. In addition, devices with several DoF and functionalities also require more parts to create numerous links and joints, actuators, and thus space, affecting the compactness of systems. Finally, aiming for mechanical performance in terms of force, speed, and motion range requires transmissions or bulky actuators, which also influence the size of the system. This thesis attempts to overcome the limitations of conventional mechanics by using origami robots, an alternative design approach for creating meso-scale structures with numerous folding joints. It consists in stacking layers of functional material to achieve low-profile and scalable structures that fold into 3D. Using this method, we developed three hybrid robots combining the decades of experience of conventional mechanics with the advantages of origami robotics. First, to enhance the performances of robots at the meso-scale, the creation of compact low-profile compliant transmissions benefiting from origami's minimal assembly of functional layers was explored. The transmissions obtained can reproduce conventional kinematics or generate unconventional motions using materials properties. Second, the development of multi-DoF compact robots was studied using the aforementioned low-profile compliant transmissions to create a multi-functional structure. The resulting robot is a fingertip haptic device called Haptigami that can render vibrotactile and three-DoF force feedback without compromising bulkiness. Then, this study aimed at creating a meso-scale, multi-DoF, and mechanically efficient robot. We combined the previous device contributions and developed Flexure Variable Stiffness Actuators (F-VSA), a novel compliant actuator that uses the origami flexure hinges' inherent stiffness to avoid hindering mechanical simplicity. Finally, we developed a software architecture that enables high-level control of the human-robot hardware and is compatible with multiple simulation engines. We used this architecture to control our robots and provide feedback to the user, based on interactions in a virtual environment. These novel robots rely on non-conventional structures, actuators, and kinematics that require exploring and testing suitable control strategies. Hence, kinematic and stiffness models were developed and used to tune the position, force, and stiffness of the end-effector. Several characterization platforms and experimental protocols suitable for testing our unique robotic systems were also developed to assess their precision and efficiency. Consequently, the results of this study pave the way for the development of robots that adapt to multiple environments, interactions, and application scenarios, compatible with the human bandwidth without hindering the user's motion and comfort in everyday life.

EPFL2022

Active origami platforms for human-robot interactions

Frédéric Henri Vaskin Giraud

EPFL2022