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"Researchers have unveiled a new approach to robotics that introduces a dynamic hundreds of years old: the paper folding craft of Japanese origami.\nA team of researchers from Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), the Wyss Institute and MIT have designed a way of creating functioning robots made out of panels that fold and unfold like origami designs.\nSee also: Fly-Sized Drone Uses Micro Energy to Buzz\nWhen a charge is applied to the structure, the robot, which looks something like a two-dimensional spider of sorts, can get up to two inches per second. \n\"The [microcontroller] brain triggers electricity sent to certain circuits,\" said research team member Sam Felton, describing the robot's self-folding mechanism during a conference call on Wednesday. \n\"On either side of the composite and inside is stiff paper. In the very middle there is a flexible printed circuit,\" Felton added. \"When electricity is applied, it heats up like when you turn on a light bulb and the heat warms up the polymer and causes it to contract. Because the polymer is bonded to the paper it pulls on the paper causing the paper to fold over on itself.\" \n\nImage:  Harvard's Wyss InstituteThat process results in the robot's movement, a dynamic that is oddly lifelike when watching the robot go from a flat surface to a fully expanded, moving object. \n\"Imagine a ream of dozens of robotic satellites sandwiched together so that they could be sent up to space and then assemble themselves remotely once they get there\u2013they could take images, collect data, and more,\" Felton said in a separate statement.\nWhile the robot isn't being introduced as a commercial product,the innovative approach could be replicated by nearly anyone with the technical skills because of its low cost. The project's startup costs ran about $11,000, according to Felton, but the materials for the robot cost just $100.\n\"Our big dream is to make the fabrication of robots fast and inexpensive,\" said research partner Daniela Rus, a professor at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. \"Now it costs many years and a lot of money to make a robot, so we are thinking that we could create a [new] tool. That we might be able to reduce the design time to a matter of hours, the fabrication costs to a matter of tens of hundreds of dollars, rather than millions of dollars.\"\nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.\nBONUS: Newest Honda Asimo Robot Moves Like a Human\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/08/07/origami-robot/>