Thick-panel Origami Cube

• DOI: 10.1016/j.mechmachtheory.2021.104411
• Publication Date: 2021-06-15T16:11:04Z
• Authors: Yuanqing Gu; Guowu Wei; Yan Chen
• Keywords: 0203 mechanical engineering; 02 engineering and technology

This paper presents a new method for constructing a novel thick-panel origami cube. By replacing the equivalent 4R-spherical linkage in a four-crease zero-thickness origami vertex with a plane-symmetric Bricard linkage, the thick-panel form of a general plane-symmetric four-crease origami vertex is identified and constructed. The proposed thick-panel vertex preserves the kinematics of the original four-crease origami vertex. Then, by utilizing the proposed thick-panel vertex, a thick-panel cube is constructed based on the zero-thickness origami cube that was proposed in our previous work. Through mechanism decomposition, geometric constraints and kinematic properties of the corresponding integrated mechanism are investigated and formulated, which reveals the kinematic equivalence between the thick-panel and zero-thickness forms of the origami cube. In addition, a prototype of the proposed thick-panel origami cube is fabricated, verifying its kinematic properties. The proposed technique can be extended to the design and construction of thick-panel polyhedrons with potential applications in the fields such as aerospace exploration, robotics and architecture.