Cook your own robots: MIT researchers devise 3D-printable robots that self-assemble when baked

A team of MIT researchers led by Professor Daniela Rus have developed printable electronic components that systematically assemble into three-dimensional configurations when baked. Rus hopes the idea of printable, “bakeable robots” will one permit consumers to download, print, and automatically assemble robots right off the Internet, with the same ease as downloading and 3D printing a plastic model.

Rus and her team demonstrated the research in two papers: the first paper explores the method of converting a 3D shape from a CAD file into a 2D pattern that perfectly reproduces the original shape when self-folding. The second paper details how to apply this technique in building electrical components from self-folding laser-cut materials.

According to Shuhei Miyashita, one of the co-authors on both papers, the research can be summed up as a technique for precisely controlling the angles at which a heated sheet folds. Sandwiching a sheet of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) between two films of rigid polyester two films of a rigid polyester perforated with slits of different widths enables the slits to close and the PVC to contract in a controlled manner once head is applied, essentially deforming the PVC.

Producing the pattern of slits is a precise process that requires designing the edges to not only perfectly align, but form a functional geometric structure. Rus explains: “you’re doing this really complicated global control that moves every edge in the system at the same time,” she says. “You want to design those edges in such a way that the result of composing all these motions, which actually interfere with each other, leads to the correct geometric structure.”

The video below demonstrates the creation of a functional strain sensor, which the current passing through it, and a self-folding coil, which is produces part of an actuator. 

Via MIT