Robotic folding of 2D and 3D structures from a ribbon

Automatic folding has drawn increasing attention in robotics research in the past ten years. The focus has been on folding two-dimensional (2D) sheets into three-dimensional (3D) structures, but little work has been done on how structures may be formed by folding ribbons. Here we propose the concept of robotic ribbon folding including a general workflow from shape design to ribbon folding and shape retention. We also propose a method to realize robotic ribbon folding on the macroscopic scale. The method consists of minimally engineered ribbons with patterned flexures, a folding robot, and a folding scheme that relates the orientation of flexures, the type of folds and the type of structural elements. By using this method we demonstrate robotic ribbon folding into 2D static structures such as triangles and squares, 3D static structures, and planar kinematic linkages such as a simple non-crossing four-bar mechanism. Burn-in result shows a four-bar mechanism with all bars' length of 5 cm could move for over 660 cycles.