Origami provides a unique tool for the design of robotic frames owing to its simple shaping principle by “folding.” However, achieving the fast and reversible activeness of a highly reconfigurable structure remains challenging owing to the limitations of accessible actuators. In particular, it is difficult to find an actuator that can realize a simultaneously large, rapid, reversible, and stable movement while leading to a favorable form factor for the origami. To overcome this, in this article, we propose a 3-D shape-shifting system consisting of a morphing origami block that complements the stability problem of shape memory alloy wire actuators by tuning its structural characteristics. This cooperative scheme improves the reversibility and stability of the shape-shifting system, which enables the rapid transformation with high degrees of freedom unlike in existing programmable origami. As a stand-alone unit of transformation, morphing block equipped with deployable mechanism and actuators weighs 6 g and has a volume change factor of ten. Furthermore, the transformation time in both directions is less than 5 s, and the block can carry more than 120 g of payload in the deployed state. The proposed system composed of multiple origami blocks can reconfigure itself into diverse 3-D target shapes.

中文翻译：

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用于轻量级可重构系统的变形折纸块


折纸由于其简单的“折叠”成型原理，为机器人框架的设计提供了一种独特的工具。然而，由于可访问执行器的限制，实现高度可重构结构的快速和可逆活性仍然具有挑战性。特别是，很难找到一种致动器能够同时实现大的、快速的、可逆的和稳定的运动，同时产生适合折纸的形状因数。为了克服这个问题，在本文中，我们提出了一种由变形折纸块组成的 3D 变形系统，该系统通过调整其结构特性来补充形状记忆合金线致动器的稳定性问题。这种协作方案提高了变形系统的可逆性和稳定性，与现有的可编程折纸不同，能够实现高自由度的快速变形。作为一个独立的变形单元，配备可展开机构和执行器的变形块重 6 克，体积变化系数为 10。此外，两个方向的变形时间小于5秒，并且该块在展开状态下可以承载超过120克的有效载荷。所提出的系统由多个折纸块组成，可以将自身重新配置成不同的 3D 目标形状。