Imagine if you touched a paper flower and suddenly it… embarrassed, shrinking, how interesting would it be?
Believe it or not, paper – a material that is so old and so familiar to us every day will become extremely interesting when it can bend, fold, and shape itself on command.
New technology helps paper can bend, fold, shape on command.
New technology being developed at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Instrumentation Institute (HCII) will turn a somewhat boring material into a very lively one.
The mechanism of action of this technology is as follows. An ultra-thin layer of thermally conductive plastic is applied on ordinary paper with a low-cost 3D printer, or even hand-painted, the plastic layer acts as an actuator.
The applied current causes the paper to bend or fold.
When an electric current is applied, the thermoplastic heats up and expands, causing the paper to bend or fold; When the current is cut off, the paper will return to its original shape.
“We wanted to recreate this old material,” said Lining Yao, assistant professor at HCII and director of the Morphing Matter Laboratory, who developed the method with his team. paper really turns paper into another material, one that can be used in both art and reality.”
Researcher Guanyun Wang, former research intern Tingyu Cheng, and a member of Yao’s Morphing Matter Lab have designed basic types of actuators, some based on origami and kirigami forms.
Lampshade cages change the shape and amount of light emitted from the lamp.
This allows them to create structures that can be turned into balls or more complex cylinders and objects.
For example, a lampshade that changes shape and the amount of light emitted from the lamp, an artificial mimosa plant whose petals bloom one after another when touched.
Lampshade cages change the shape and amount of light emitted from the lamp.
This past June, more than 50 students from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China used the technology to create elaborate pop-up books featuring famous artworks like Starry Night. and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.
Yao’s team presented the technology in April at CHI 2018, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in Montreal.
Yao said researchers are refining the method. There is still much work to be done. The drive process is quite slow, and Yao and her team hope this will be solved by engineering materials – using paper with higher thermal conductivity and developing printed filaments that are calibrated to use used in transmissions.
These paper-use actuators can also be used for plastics and fabrics.
Paper drive technology will be exhibited at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz (Austria); Bozar Center for Fine Arts in Brussels (Belgium); and Hyundai Motorstudio in Beijing (China) in September.