Most people are familiar with the Japanese art of origami. Using no other materials and without cutting it, a piece of paper is repeatedly folded until it resembles a swan, a fish or a butterfly for example. The same concepts are behind the latest breakthrough in self-assembling robot technology.

Researchers used a composite of flat sheets of paper and shape memory polymers, that change shape at high temperatures, with embedded electronics. When activated the sheets transformed, in about 4 minutes, into functional machines which crawled away at a rate of 2 inches per second.

“Folding allows you to avoid the ‘nuts and bolts’ assembly approaches typically used for robots or other complex electromechanical devices and it allows you to integrate components (e.g., electronics, sensors, actuators) while flat,” said Rob Wood, the Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences Core Faculty Member at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and the study’s senior author in a statement.

Working with colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the researchers used parts and material which are readily available including hinges with embedded heating circuits which can be activated to trigger the assembly process.

“Traditional manufacturing requires expensive machinery, and 3D printing is too slow for mass production, but planar composites can be rapidly built with inexpensive tools like laser cutters and etch tanks, and then folded into functional machines. Such manufacturing methods would be ideal for producing 100-1000 units. These robots are inexpensive and [their] layered composites can be built faster than equivalent 3-D printed structures,” said said Sam Felton, a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and the lead author of a new report in the 8 August issue of the journal Science .

This approach comes shortly after another paper from MIT researchers which demonstrated the viability of a wax and foam material that allows shape changing, self healing robots.

White the practical applications of these types of technologies may not immediately be apparent, it is far more than just a neat trick. Shape shifting or self assembling robots could be used for search and rescue in spaces too small for humans. A number of self assembling robots could, for example, be used to search a collapsed building or to explore caves and tunnels.

Eventually the technology could even lead to self assembling consumer products. At some point in the future a consumer could purchase a product from Ikea, push a button and then stand back and watch as their new furniture assembles itself.

A video demonstration of the self assembling robot can be found on the science magazine website.