A programmable sheet self-folds into a boat- and into a plane-shape. Credit: Robert Wood, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Daniella Rus, MIT/CSAIL. "The process begins when we ...

In addition to helping scientists understand how natural soft structures such as flower petals and embryos take shape, the technique could be used to make polymer actuators. These devices move in ...

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a mathematical framework that can turn any sheet of material into any prescribed shape, ...

Materials scientists seeking to encapsulate droplets of one fluid within another often use molecules like soap or micro- or nano-particles to do it. One distinct way of wrapping a droplet is to use a ...

New research shows that microscale robots can be made from shape shifting 2D sheets. Itai Cohen and Itay Griniasty of Cornell University in the US have developed a mathematical technique for encoding ...

Researchers have developed a mathematical framework that can turn any sheet of material into any prescribed shape, inspired by the paper craft termed kirigami (from the Japanese, kiri, meaning to cut ...

Experimental and theoretical physicists and a polymer scientist have teamed up to use much thinner sheets than before to achieve seeking to encapsulate droplets of one fluid within another. Thinner, ...