Finding Some Impossibility of Flat-Folding of Given Origami Crease Pattern by Graphical Representation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a graph-based method to efficiently identify impossible flat-foldings in origami crease patterns, focusing on unsigned patterns satisfying Kawasaki-Justin conditions, and demonstrates its effectiveness with known impossible examples.

Contribution

It presents a novel graphical approach using cycle basis properties to detect flat-folding impossibility in specific origami crease patterns, extending prior NP-hardness results.

Findings

The method can identify impossible flat-foldings efficiently.

It applies to unsigned crease patterns satisfying Kawasaki-Justin conditions.

Demonstrated effectiveness with known impossible fold examples.

Abstract

Flat-foldability problem of origami is the problem to determine whether a given crease pattern drawn on a piece of paper is possible to fold without any penetration or intrusion of a polygon into any connections among them. It is known from the results of Bern and Hayes and following studies that determining whether an origami diagram which constitute of polygons in general shapes can be flat-folded is an NP-hard problem. In this manuscript, on determining the flat foldability of unsigned crease patterns that satisfy the necessary conditions imposed by the Kawasaki-Justin theorem for all interior vertices, we introduce a graph representation based on an arrangement of polygons whose contours are consist of creases, allowing overlapping of the polygons. On the graphical representation, a method is proposed to efficiently detect the conditions for flat-folding inability by using the properties of the cycle basis. We also demonstrate the above method using an example of a fold that is already known to be impossible to flat-fold.