Origami robots now come with their own tiny exoskeletons

You’ve probably seen origami “robots” before: flat sheets of metal or plastic that fold

into bots that can walk, climb, and even swim. They’re not of much practical use right now, but they represent a promising path for robot development. (We’ve even made them out of meat so they can work inside the body.) Now, in a bid to augment the bots’ abilities, researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have come up with a new tool for them: origami exoskeletons. In a paper published today, researchers describe four exoskeletons, each made out of a plastic sheet that folds into a predefined shape when heated for a few seconds. There’s a boat-shaped exoskeleton and a glider: one for “walking,” and another that folds up into a crude wheel for faster movement. Each exoskeleton can be donned in turn by a tiny lead bot called Primer. This isn’t a robot as we usually think of them, but a small magnetic cube that can be controlled remotely using magnetic fields.                                                                                           https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/27/16360316/origami-robots-now-come-with-their-own-tiny-exoskeletons