Re-foldable origami-inspired bidirectional twisting of artificial muscles reproduces biological motion

Recent advances in soft-matter artificial muscles enable machines, especially robots, to reproduce muscle-like actuation of biological organisms, yet there remain substantial and persistent challenges to develop advanced artificial muscles capable of mimicking flexible, controllable, and versatile biological motions. Here, we introduce re-foldable origami strategy into artificial muscles that can use different pre-programmed crease patterns to achieve multimode morphing. Re-foldable square-twist artificial muscles derived from re-foldable square-twist origami is demonstrated, where different twisting directions of re-foldable square-twist artificial muscles are induced through differences in torsional resistance resulting from applying vacuum power on two chambers in sequence. Re-foldable squire-twist artificial muscles can exhibit a complex compound motion coupling twisting, bending, and contraction motions into one, allowing them to flexibly and vividly mimic versatile biological motions by a single muscle or multimuscle combination (like “building bricks”), including hand grasping, bicep stretching, and the bidirectional twisting of the neck, wrist, or ankle. [Display omitted] Re-foldability of origami is harnessed to create re-foldable artificial musclesRare artificial muscle that can perform bidirectional twisting motionMimicking of versatile biological motions Jiao et al. take inspiration from the re-foldable nature of origami to design re-foldable artificial muscles with bidirectional twisting capability. The muscles are flexible and vividly mimic versatile biological motions using single muscle or combination of multiple muscles (like “building bricks”). Motion types include hand grasping, bicep stretching, and the bidirectional twisting of the neck, wrist, or ankle.