Solar-powered shape-changing origami microfliers.

Using wind to disperse microfliers that fall like seeds and leaves can help automate large-scale sensor deployments. Here, we present battery-free microfliers that can change shape in mid-air to vary their dispersal distance. We designed origami microfliers using bistable leaf-out structures and uncovered an important property: A simple change in the shape of these origami structures causes two dramatically different falling behaviors.

Leaf-Like Origami with Bistability for Self-Adaptive Grasping Motions.

The leaf-like origami structure is inspired by geometric patterns found in nature, exhibiting unique transitions between open and closed shapes. With a bistable energy landscape, leaf-like origami is able to replicate the autonomous grasping of objects observed in biological systems such as the Venus flytrap. We show uniform grasping motions of the leaf-like origami, as well as various nonuniform grasping motions that arise from its multitransformable nature.