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A research team of Seoul National University led by Professor Kyu-Jin Cho has developed an origami-inspired robotic arm that is foldable, self-assembling and also highly-rigid. (The researchers include Suk-Jun Kim, Dae-Young Lee, Gwang-Pil Jung, Professor of SeoulTech)
They developed a novel robotic arm using a concept of variable stiffness. The robotic arm made it possible to change the shape with a single wire, thus raising the possibility of practical use of the origami structure. The robotic arm is light-weighted, and can fold flat and extend like an automatic umbrella and even becomes instantly stiff.
The key principle is a collapsible locker and this enables the robotic arm to overcome the drawbacks of origami-inspired structures that is hard to withstand external forces and is hard to be easily actuated.
The variable stiffness mechanism...