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The traditional art of paper folding, known as Origami, fascinated the scientists at MIT‘s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab so much that they decided they would build a robot that could do it. No, not a robot that folds paper but an Origami robot that itself is built by folding material. The final product is a tiny, gentle and wafer-thin robot that self-folds, walks, even swims and recycles itself once the job is done.

Built by Shuhei Miyashita and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this robot is made of plastic and merely 1.7 cm long, about the size of a Rs 1 coin. As it sets up, the robot folds itself and then uses its folded body to propel itself. The robot is partly built out of Polyvinyl Chloride, a plastic polymer used in making pipes and water bottles, which is coated into three different layers. Once the folded sheet reaches the temperature of 65 °C, it contracts, causing the body of the robot to fold. It then moves about with the help of a magnet, which is programmed by an external magnetic field that allows the free movement of the robot in any directions.

Once it has completed its task, the robot can dip itself in liquid-soluble materials like water and acetone. The sheet dissolves completely, leaving only the permanent magnet behind. "We complete the cycle from birth through life, activity and the end of life," says Miyashita. "The circle is closed."

The robot has potential real life uses too: researchers said they hoped tiny sheets of material could be injected into the human body, move around as necessary, use the self-folding to assemble and carry out tasks, and then dissolve as need be. Getting from the cute little origami robot to that level of complexity, however, will take much more work.