Computational Design Synthesis of Origami-Adapted Rigid-Foldable Structures

Origami is the art and science of folding a flat material into desired objects. Today, origami designs are mostly chosen based on experience with well-known patterns that are manually altered to fit the problem. This limits the design of origami-adapted structures to a handful of experienced people and makes the process at times tedious and time-consuming.

This research is developing a method that, in an engineering context, provides design support for the conceptualization of origami-adapted structures, covering the entire process from the input of boundary conditions to the output of foldable topologies. The goal is to develop a computational design synthesis method to generate crease patterns, evaluate and accommodate them so that they physically fold and resist required forces. This will reduce time in their design and more importantly create new and novel folding structures. Applications considered include medical devices, robotics and space applications.