Construction and engineering could be about to change forever. Snapology is the technology that allows material to change the size and shape meaning that there is the potential to produce buildings that can flatten and then pop up again. Based on origami, there are many opportunities for this material to be used in the future.
According to Chuck Hoberman, talking to Nature Communications, there are opportunities for dynamic architecture, and this includes retractable roofs, portable shelters and building facades that can be adapted at will. It is not the first occasion that origami has turned out to be an inspiration for various design and engineering projects. There are wheels and bridges – and there have even been cases of origami robots.READ ALSO: Ultra-thin and Flexible Photovoltaic Cells From MIT
Snapology is the latest process to be influenced by origami. There are a number of connected cubes that have 36 edges and 24 faces when they are put together. Each of the edges can have cubes folded against them, and as this happens, the shape changes.
The building can become totally flat but thanks to pneumatic actuators that are built in, there can be different forms programmed in. The trigger for change can be water, electricity or thermal energy.
Standard mechanics have been needed previously, but here there are a number of advantages including how the building will fold and how simple it will be to manufacture. It will be a while however before we see buildings in place but so far the size of the prototype has been 4 x 4 x 4 cube of 64 cells.
