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https://newatlas.com/materials/hoberman-spheres-scissor-jointed-collapsible-shapes/>
"Chances are you’ve seen Hoberman spheres, those kinetic lattices made of
joint-connected rods that, with a little manual effort, can contract or expand.
Inspired by the ancient Japanese arts of origami (paper-folding) and kirigami
(paper-folding-and-cutting), a team from Harvard University in the US and Tokyo
University in Japan has developed expandable structures that, like Hoberman
spheres, use rods and scissored joints. They’re calling them "collapsible
scissored surfaces and pantographic lattices" ... although Hobegami would be
much cooler and faster to type.
As Physics graduate student Noah Toyonaga writes in a recent
Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences paper, the Harvard/Tokyo University team he
led created “an algorithm for growing pantograph structures […] to explore the
full space of possible mechanisms,” which they used “to computationally design
and physically assemble a series of examples of varying complexity.” The
devices were produced using multi-material 3D printers.
According to senior author Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, “Origami showed how
folds can encode shape. Kirigami showed how cuts can unlock motion and
functionality. This work asks a complementary question: What can be achieved
when the basic building block is not a fold or a cut, but a linkage?" Mahadevan
is also the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, of
Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and of Physics.
When volume, and not just mass, is a performance limit for objects, tools,
structures, and vehicles, collapsibility is a valuable design feature. Whether
you’re piloting a submarine, a cargo airplane, or a spacecraft to restock a
space station, if you can afford more fuel for the extra tonnage, you’re
probably better off taking more collapsible furniture, helmets, surgical
implants, habitats, cubesats, spacesuits, flying donuts, and flying wings than
fewer non-collapsible ones, thus reducing the number of costly and risky
trips."
Via Esther Schindler.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
