'Developable Mechanisms': New Class of Mechanical Devices Morph and Transform
Brigham Young University engineers introduce a new class of mechanical devices called "developable mechanisms." They are built into the surfaces of structures, without taking up any space below the surface. Developable surfaces and materials can take on three-dimensional shapes from flat formations without tearing, somewhat like Iron Man's transforming exoskeleton suit. Compact mechanisms are increasingly important as manufacturers work to get more complex functionality in less space. Potential applications of these new developable mechanisms are in medical surgical instruments, vehicle and airplane storage components, and adjustable drones for military.
Transcript
00:00:00 So what we're creating at BYU are developable mechanisms that make it possible to make complex machines that integrate onto surfaces to be very compact but now can deploy and do complex things. A developable mechanism can reside in a curved surface so it's kind of hidden in there and then when I actuate it, it comes out of the surface so one example might be things that reside on Iron Man's suit for instance on his arm there's some kind of covering there that's a developable surface and if there's a mechanism that comes out of that, does something cool it comes back in, that's a developable mechanism. So there are a lot of industries that
00:00:42 this can apply to, one of which is surgical equipment if this was to scale it would be a small minimally-invasive surgical device and as it goes in you have two different components that will unfold off of it one of which could be a camera or a light which still leaves the center tube hollow for a different device such as these forceps to now come in and do the operation. This technology shows the most promise in the medical industry and the space industry in the space industry want it to be compact for launch and and once it gets into space it can deploy. This may be a rocket or a missile and have this fairly complex mechanism that just morphs and transforms off of that surface. Here's a wheel that's rolling on say a Mars rover we hit some obstacle we
00:01:35 deploy that becomes a crawling mechanism that can crawl over those obstacles. We're also beginning to look at things like deployable drones so I want to have the drone be nice and compact when I carry it around so what's fun here is it's deployed right then it can go back into the surface. We were doing work in origami-based engineering and as part of that we moved into curved folds - the mathematics revealed we can implant machines on there that will have these complex functions and morph out of those surfaces. We usually design the mechanism independent of its home so the idea of using a curved surface as a kind of
00:02:19 home for a mechanism, that's revolutionary because we don't tend to think about mechanisms in this way. Suddenly we could do really complex things that no one's ever been able to do before.