Publication

An End-to-End Approach to Making Self-Folded 3D Surface Shapes by Uniform Heating

AbstractThis paper presents an end-to-end approach for creating 3D shapes by self-folding planar sheets activated by uniform heating. These shapes can be used as the mechanical bodies of robots. The input to this process is a 3D geometry (e.g. an OBJ file). The output is a physical object with the specified geometry. We describe an algorithm pipeline that (1) identifies the overall geometry of the input, (2) computes a crease pattern that causes the sheet to self-fold into the desired 3D geometry when activated by uniform heating, (3) automatically generates the design of a 2D sheet with the desired pattern and (4) automatically generates the design files required to fabricate the 2D structure. We demonstrate these algorithms by applying them to complex 3D shapes. We demonstrate the fabrication of a self-folding object with over 50 faces from automatically generated design files.

Download publication

Related Resources

See what’s new.

Publication

2016

RetroFab: A Design Tool for Retrofitting Physical Interfaces using Actuators, Sensors and 3D Printing

We present RetroFab, an end-to-end design and fabrication environment…

Publication

2017

PhenoStacks: Cross-Sectional Cohort Phenotype Comparison Visualizations

Cross-sectional phenotype studies are used by genetics researchers to…

Publication

2020

A subtractive manufacturing constraint for level set topology optimization

We present a method for enforcing manufacturability constraints in…

Publication

2010

Making Shapes from Modules by Magnification

We present a distributed algorithm for creating a modular shape by…

Get in touch

Something pique your interest? Get in touch if you’d like to learn more about Autodesk Research, our projects, people, and potential collaboration opportunities.

Contact us