Kinegami: Open-source Software for Creating Kinematic Chains from Tubular Origami

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School of Engineering and Applied Science::General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception Laboratory::Lab Papers (GRASP)
Degree type
Discipline
Computer Sciences
Engineering
Subject
Robotics
Robotics
Kinematic Chains
Kinematics
Computational Design
Funder
National Science Foundation
Army Research Office
Grant number
Copyright date
2024-07-16
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Related resources
Contributor
Feshbach, Daniel
Chen, Wei-Hsi
Koditschek, Daniel
Sung, Cynthia
Abstract

Arms, legs, and fingers of animals and robots are all examples of “kinematic chains" - mechanisms with sequences of joints connected by effectively rigid links. Lightweight kinematic chains can be manufactured quickly and cheaply by folding tubes. In recent work [Chen et al. 2023], we demonstrated that origami patterns for kinematic chains with arbitrary numbers of degrees of freedom can be constructed algorithmically from a minimal kinematic specification (axes that joints rotate about or translate along). The work was founded on a catalog of tubular crease patterns for revolute joints (rotation about an axis), prismatic joints (translation along an axis), and links, which compose to form the specified design. With this paper, we release an open-source python implementation of these patterns and algorithms. Users can specify kinematic chains as a sequence of degrees of freedom or by specific joint locations and orientations. Our software uses this information to construct a single crease pattern for the corresponding chain. The software also includes functions to move or delete joints in an existing chain and regenerate the connecting links, and a visualization tool so users can check that the chain can achieve their desired configurations. This paper provides a detailed guide to the code and its usage, including an explanation of our proposed representation for tubular crease patterns. We include a number of examples to illustrate the software’s capabilities and its potential for robot and mechanism design.

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Publication date
2024-07-16
Journal title
Origami 8: Eighth International Meeting on Origami in Science, Mathematics and Education
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Issue number
Publisher
Springer
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Comments
Sponsor (NSF) guidelines require that we make this version publicly accessible within 12 months of publication.
Recommended citation
@conference{feshbach2024kinegamiPython, title = {Kinegami: Open-source Software for Creating Kinematic Chains from Tubular Origami}, author = {Daniel Feshbach and Wei-Hsi Chen and Daniel E. Koditschek and Cynthia Sung}, url = {https://github.com/SungRoboticsGroup/KinegamiPython https://sung.seas.upenn.edu/research/kinegami/}, year = {2024}, date = {2024-07-16}, urldate = {2024-07-16}, booktitle = {8th International Meeting on Origami in Science, Mathematics, and Education (8OSME)}, abstract = {Arms, legs, and fingers of animals and robots are all examples of “kinematic chains" - mechanisms with sequences of joints connected by effectively rigid links. Lightweight kinematic chains can be manufactured quickly and cheaply by folding tubes. In recent work [Chen et al. 2022], we demonstrated that origami patterns for kinematic chains with arbitrary numbers of degrees of freedom can be constructed algorithmically from a minimal kinematic specification (axes that joints rotate about or translate along). The work was founded on a catalog of tubular crease patterns for revolute joints (rotation about an axis), prismatic joints (translation along an axis), and links, which compose to form the specified design. With this paper, we release an open-source python implementation of these patterns and algorithms. Users can specify kinematic chains as a sequence of degrees of freedom or by specific joint locations and orientations. Our software uses this information to construct a single crease pattern for the corresponding chain. The software also includes functions to move or delete joints in an existing chain and regenerate the connecting links, and a visualization tool so users can check that the chain can achieve their desired configurations. This paper provides a detailed guide to the code and its usage, including an explanation of our proposed representation for tubular crease patterns. We include a number of examples to illustrate the software’s capabilities and its potential for robot and mechanism design.}, keywords = {}, pubstate = {published}, tppubtype = {conference} }
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