
Robots Get Flexible and Torqued Up With Origami Wheels - spectruman
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/robots-get-flexible-and-torqued-up-with-deformable-origami-wheels#.U58z8gFJ76U.hackernews
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polemic
Incidentally, the large rear wheels in drag racers is an example of a variable
torque wheel design:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ug6w4ZjwVo#t=55](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ug6w4ZjwVo#t=55)

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mhb
The automatic, passive adjustment is interesting, but these could just as
easily use a conventional mechanism instead of origami. Is there some
advantage to the origami aspect?

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robotresearcher
Potential for manufacturing processes, which are great at depositing in flat
layers at very small scales. Structures manufactured flat can subsequently be
folded into 3D shapes. It's a candidate method for making very small machines.

Wood's group (and possibly others - not my field) have even shown that pre-
stressed parts can be built into the layers that cause the structure to 'pop-
up' into it's 3D shape, or nearly, when released from its manufacturing
scaffold. Neat.

Examples along with more nice things at
[http://micro.seas.harvard.edu/research.html](http://micro.seas.harvard.edu/research.html)

Another sometimes-cited motivation for folding robot parts is fitting
planetary rovers neatly inside their spacecraft, or inserting robots into
nuclear reactors through small service pipes.

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jsinghdreams
Just a thought: Would it be possible to scale this technology up to the level
of a car using folded graphene to act as the wheels?

