This Origami-bot Is a Lightweight Take on a Robot Arm
Say hello to Twister. That’s Twisted Tower Robot, to those of you who demand full names—a title that does a rather better job of describing the form of the new device.
Developed by researchers from Case Western Reserve University, the arm is made up of a long 3-D-printed replica of an origami tower. It also has four thin cables running through it, with a series of pulleys and motors that allow the arm to be manipulated.
The team has also built a version of the arm that features three smaller origami towers as fingers. Those are able to absorb excess energy as they grasp an object, which allows the arm to pick up delicate items like eggs and ripe fruit without the need for force sensing. Details of the arm are published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.
The device won’t be bolting together cars anytime soon. But its light weight could make it useful for some applications where every gram counts, such as space missions.
Keep Reading
Most Popular
The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it
Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.
How Rust went from a side project to the world’s most-loved programming language
For decades, coders wrote critical systems in C and C++. Now they turn to Rust.
Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?
An approach that promised to democratize design may have done the opposite.
Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death
Can anti-aging breakthroughs add 10 healthy years to the human life span? The CEO of OpenAI is paying to find out.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.