Robots Mori are formed on the principle of origami in a modular design

Created in ancient Japan applied art of origami has become an international. Another of his reinvention took place in Lausanne: local engineers have developed robots Mori — simple transformers, “units-bricks” for future of complex structures and systems. They are combined into a canvas, which itself is formed as a sheet of paper – on the principles of origami.

Single Mori looks like a triangular flat plate with moving gears on each face, a microcontroller, sensors to detect obstacles and balancing. The dimensions of the robot 70×6 mm, weight 26 grams. In offline version, it is just a “bug” that crawls back and forth, the radius of the wire length from the external source of energy.

If you attach to one Mori second robot, or a plastic plate, the hinges turn in the linkage. Joined the item will move, rotating around the axis, which is the side of the triangle where it is attached. Mori controls the movement of all three “neighbors” and can be folded into a pyramid or disclosed arbitrarily.

With the addition of new modules mobility design natural increase in the complexity of forms which it may take, is beginning to capture the imagination. In theory, when a sufficient number of components, Mori can shape into anything and be transformed by the user. Performance of the system to estimate makes no sense, the technology is purely experimental and make Mori a hammer for hammering a nail instead of a microscope no one is going.

The main value of development like Mori – scientists and engineers are looking for the optimal interface for the establishment of semi-Autonomous transforming systems. And already to them an extensive field of activity, from creating new tools from scratch in space, the lack of spare parts, before the invention of the cyber-prosthesis that can be leg, arm, tentacle or a fly swatter by the host team.
Source — type NCCR