PAPER structures created using the principles of origami could lead to cheap, easy-to-make robots that are very different from their traditional metal brethren.
George Whitesides and colleagues at Harvard University previously built squid-inspired robots with artificial muscles made of soft plastic and powered by pneumatic air pumps. Now they have combined this technique with paper to create a series of lightweight structures capable of bending and twisting, and even lifting heavy weights.
Paper is flexible, but unlike plastic it does not stretch, making it useful for forming rigid structures when a paper balloon is filled with air. Whitesides’s team exploited…
