--- title: "Ikea Trembles as Scientists Invent Flat Packable Robot" description: "A team of researchers at Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have come up with an ingenious origami-inspired robot." date: "2023-06-14" modified: "2023-06-14" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-invent-flat-robot" categories: - "Robotics" - "Robots and Machines" tags: - "robots" - "space" - "the digest" --- # Ikea Trembles as Scientists Invent Flat Packable Robot ![A team of researchers at Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have come up with an ingenious origami-inspired robot.]() *\Image: EPFL\* ## Origami Bot A team of researchers at Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have come up with an ingenious, origami-inspired robot that can turn itself into a huge number of three-dimensional shapes. Best of all, it can fold and unfold itself like a piece of flat-pack Ikea furniture, which its creates say makes it an ideal candidate for assisting astronauts inside the cramped environment of a spacecraft. As seen in a video demonstration, the bot — called Mori3 — can dexterously walk and pose with four flattened limbs, or even roll around once bent into a ring shape. "Our aim with Mori3 is to create a modular, origami-like robot that can be assembled and disassembled at will depending on the environment and task at hand," said Jamie Paik, director of EPFL's Reconfigurable Robotics Lab and co-author of a [new paper]() published in the journal *Nature Machine Intelligence* about the unusual bot, in a [statement](). https://youtu.be/CD5Cj7RhxY0 ## Polygonobots, Assemble The robot's unusual polygonal shape when folded, essentially a flat triangle, forced the researchers to start from scratch. "We had to rethink the way we understand robotics," said co-inventor Christoph Belke, a post-doctoral researcher in robotics at EPFL, in the statement. "These robots can change their own shape, attach to each other, communicate and reconfigure to form functional and articulated structures." The researchers are now investigating whether multiple robots could attach themselves to each other to be even more useful. "Of course, a general-purpose robot like Mori3 will be less effective than specialized robots in certain areas," Paik said. "That said, Mori3’s biggest selling point is its versatility." **More on weird robots:** *[Scientists Finally Invented Robot That Can Sweat Heavily]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()