scientist at Georgia Tech have figured out how to produce origami from light , no hands required . All the technique uses is a PowerPoint slide , a projector , and some resin . Georgia Tech mechanical engineerJerry Qiand his colleagues exposed photo - absorbent rosin to light patterns to get the material to crouch into specific shapes , as they write in a newspaper publisher inScience Advances .

The researcher put the design they wanted to fold into a PowerPoint slide and externalise that in grayscale onto resin in a Petri dish using a commercial-grade projector , produce rosin that folded itself into peak , cranes , and aMiura fold .

The deflection of the liquid resin is affected by both the meter it ’s exposed to light and the vividness of that brightness . Qi explains toResearchGatethat when the stratum of liquid resin is exposed to the lighter , it shrinks the layers of rosin at unlike rate . The stratum hit directly by the light therapeutic faster than the layers farther down . Because the different side of meat of the resin are n’t curing at the same rate , it create what he call in “ nonuniform shoplifting stress , ” flex the rosin along that course of light source as it solidify .

Rob Felt, Georgia Tech

Since the layers of rosin are so thin , it ’s very difficult to make larger objects using this proficiency . The rosin origami figure they ’ve made so far are smaller than the face of a poop .

The Georgia Tech team suggests that this technique could be used to make sonant origami machines , among other program . They are n’t the only I function on this engineering , though . of late , scientist at North Carolina State Universitycreatedsimilar self - folding polymer that were controlled by dissimilar colored lights . Those investigator skip to be able-bodied to remotely manipulate materials on satellite in outer space or for aesculapian uses .

[ h / tResearchGate ]

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