Towards One-Dollar Robots: An Integrated Design and Fabrication Strategy for Electromechanical Systems

TL;DR

This paper presents a low-cost, integrated design and fabrication approach for electromechanical robots using origami-inspired folding and E-textiles, enabling accessible robotics with minimal resources.

Contribution

It introduces a novel strategy combining origami and E-textiles techniques to create affordable robots from single-layer sheets and conductive threads.

Findings

Successfully fabricated a $0.40 electromechanical oscillator.

Demonstrated the oscillator's ability to generate electrical oscillation.

Showcased potential for simple robot control without external electronics.

Abstract

To improve the accessibility of robotics, we propose a design and fabrication strategy to build low-cost electromechanical systems for robotic devices. Our method, based on origami-inspired cut-and-fold and E-textiles techniques, aims at minimizing the resources for robot creation. Specifically, we explore techniques to create robots with the resources restricted to single-layer sheets (e.g. polyester film) and conductive sewing threads. To demonstrate our strategy's feasibility, these techniques are successfully integrated into an electromechanical oscillator (about 0.40 USD), which can generate electrical oscillation under constant-current power and potentially be used as a simple robot controller in lieu of additional external electronics.