When most people picture robots, they see machines with rigid parts. The robots developed by Cagdas Onal, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and robotics engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), are soft, with parts made from deformable plastics and rubber. Soft robots are safer to operate around people and are ideally suited to carry out a variety of tasks that their traditionally rigid cousins can’t, including moving snake-like through confined spaces. But their ability to bend in many axes and change their shape make them unable to carry heavy loads, which limits their utility. Onal is building a new class of variable-stiffness robots that have which have rigidity and softness. His innovative designs draw on the ancient art of paper folding, known as origami.
