Origami Robot: How ABB Robots Meet Folding Machines

An origami robot sounds like a toy, but the idea is old engineering in new paper. Fold a flat sheet along the right lines and you get a shape that is stiff, light and cheap to make. Researchers now use that trick to build grippers, wheels and robots that assemble themselves. This post follows the origami robot from a 1797 Japanese folding book to space solar arrays and lab prototypes, then asks where ABB's industrial arms fit. They are not folding cranes today, but they already handle the flat sheets, cartons and panels that folding machines work with.

Two folded paper cranes, the best known origami model. Photo: Laitche / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

From folded cranes to folded geometry

Folding paper into shapes has a long history in Japan, and a printed book from 1797, Hiden Senbazuru Orikata, shows how to fold linked cranes from a single sheet. Designs like this were passed on as written instructions and diagrams, which matters for robots later. A fold is a repeatable procedure: the same creases in the same order give the same shape. A robot program has that same property, and it is a big reason folding looks like a natural task to automate.

A page from Hiden Senbazuru Orikata, the 1797 Japanese book on folding linked cranes. Photo: Shimokobe Shusui via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

In the twentieth century folding became a design discipline. Akira Yoshizawa created a huge number of original models and helped spread a system of lines and arrows for diagramming folds, so that other people could follow a model without watching it being made. The paper crane stayed the best known symbol, and strings of cranes still hang at memorials such as the one in Hiroshima. The important change was that folding now had a notation, and a notation can be turned into geometry and then into code.

Strings of folded paper cranes, photographed at Hiroshima. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The turning point for engineers was the Miura fold, devised by the Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura in 1985. It packs a flat sheet into a compact stack of panels that all unfold at once when you pull two opposite corners. That needs far fewer motors than folding each panel on its own, which cuts weight and complexity. The same crease pattern has since been explored for maps, solar panels and other deployable structures, wherever a large surface has to travel small and open in one motion.

Paper folded in Miura-ori patterns, the crease layout devised by Koryo Miura. Photo: Origamicke / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Space was the first place where folded structures had to work with nobody there to help. A Miura folded solar panel flew on Japan's Space Flyer Unit in 1995, where it was meant to unfold in orbit and be folded again so the spacecraft could be retrieved by the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Reports describe the result as a partial success. Agencies have kept testing deployable wings since, such as the 12 metre solar wings of ESA's Mercury Transfer Module, whose deployment mechanisms were tried out at its technical centre.

Engineers test the deployment of a 12 metre solar wing for ESA's Mercury Transfer Module. Photo: ESA / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

Folding robots and where ABB fits today

Today the work has moved from panels to whole machines. In 2014 a Harvard and MIT team built a robot from a flat sheet of paper and plastic with embedded circuits. The hinges heated on command, and in about four minutes it folded itself up and crawled away at roughly 5.4 centimetres per second. In 2019 Shuguang Li, Robert Wood, Daniela Rus and colleagues described a vacuum driven origami "magic ball" gripper soft enough for food. Roll out solar arrays on the International Space Station apply the same flat to compact thinking at orbital scale.

A roll out solar array on the International Space Station beside the station's robot arm. Photo: NASA via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Recent news keeps the idea current. In October 2026 coverage of a KAIST team's origami inspired wheel for small lunar rovers reached a wider audience. The wheel, announced in December 2025, folds from about 230 millimetres across to about 500 millimetres, and it is meant to let a small rover reach lunar pits and lava tubes. A wheel is one folding robot part, and a factory is another. ABB's dual arm YuMi IRB 14000 handles small parts at a bench, the sort of delicate work that fold and assemble designs would need.

ABB YuMi assembling small parts beside a lab worker. Photo: ABB

Packaging is where factory folding is already big business, and ABB's IRB 360 FlexPicker is a staple there. This delta robot picks and places small items at high speed from a moving conveyor, so it suits the repetitive work around a folding line. Our post on the carton erecting robot covers how flat blanks become boxes. A FlexPicker does not fold origami, and ABB has not announced an origami product, but feeding flat blanks to a folding station is a job its speed would suit. That is a possibility rather than a product.

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker robots packing small items at high speed. Photo: ABB

What folding robots need next

The next steps for factories involve large folded things. ABB's IRB 6700 has been shown lifting a solar module for a folding roof at dhp technology, a case where a robot places panels that later fold and unfold on a building. Folding structures also raise questions of tolerance. A hinge that must close a thousand times needs parts placed with the same care every time, so the hard part is accurate motion control and good hinge design rather than a new gripper. Skills matter too, because few plants have staff who can design a crease pattern and program the robot that handles it.

An ABB IRB 6700 lifts a solar module for a folding roof at dhp technology. Photo: ABB

Programs for such work are usually built and tested first in RobotStudio, where a crease pattern can become a path before any paper is wasted. For homes the idea is further off. Foldable robots could be cheap to ship and store, and a flat pack arm sounds attractive, but cost, strength and safety are open problems. A folding arm that bends the wrong way near a person is a safety case before it is a product. Laundry folding is the nearest home task, and our post on laundry cloth handling shows how hard soft sheets still are for robots.

An engineer programs a robot cell in RobotStudio next to an ABB industrial robot. Photo: ABB

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