Trade Space Exploration of Magnetically Actuated Origami Mechanisms

Self-folding origami has the potential to be utilized in novel areas such as self-assembling robots and shape-morphing structures. Important decisions in the development of such applications include the choice of active material and its placement on the origami model. With proper active material placement, the error between the actual and target shapes can be minimized along with cost, weight, and input energy requirements. A method for creating magnetically actuated dynamic models and experimentally verifying their results is briefly reviewed, after which the joint stiffness and magnetic material approximations used in the dynamic model are discussed in more detail. Through the incorporation of dynamic models of magnetically actuated origami mechanisms into the Applied Research Laboratory's trade space visualizer (atsv), the trade spaces of self-folding dynamic models of the waterbomb base and Shafer's frog tongue are explored. Finally, a design tradeoff is investigated between target shape approximation error and the placement of magnetic material needed to reach a target shape. These two examples demonstrate the potential use of this process as a design tool for other self-folding origami mechanisms.