Robots are taking “dress for success” to a whole other level.
A new type of shape-shifting robot can undergo complete metamorphosis in a matter of minutes. The bot is composed of a simple metal cube that wraps itself in various high-tech origami sheets that fold into wings, wheels and other appendages for getting around. By donning and doffing different origami exoskeletons, the metal core can quickly switch from a walking to rolling to sailing bot and back again.
“It’s almost like putting clothes on the robot to give it different kinds of powers,” says study coauthor Daniela Rus, a roboticist at MIT. Such quickly customizable machines, described online September 27 in Science Robotics, could be useful for everything from surgery to space travel.