Origami device in 3D print safely captures the soft sea creatures for the study | 3DPrint.com

Many 3D printing applications and innovations, such as self-folding objects, robots and face masks, have been inspired by the Japanese art folding origami Now a group of scientists from Harvard University, the University of Rhode Island and the City University of New York (CUNY) have combined the principles of 3D printing and origami to find a less damaging method Creatures like squid, anemones and jellyfish.

Although soft forms like these are adapted to the pressures oceanic, it's hard to catch them for study purposes without hurting the topics you want to know more about. "who helped design the catch device, says that these creatures are often referred to as" forgotten fauna "because their study was so neglected but the research team mul ti-academic recently introduced its 12-sided 3D printed trap, inspired by o rigami, which can gently bend these animals, without hurting them.

The RAD device, which is an abbreviation for a rotating dodecahedron, is much better equipped to handle these delicate creatures than nets or samplers. It can be attached to the arm of an underwater rover, then fired remotely, and has already managed to trap jellyfish, squid and octopus at a depth of 700 meters. However, the design can work at depths of up to 11 kilometers, with the possibility of being enlarged even further for larger creatures.

Zhi Ern Teoh, a mechanical engineer at Harvard, said the most important part of the design was to deploy it with a single engine so the system had fewer points of failure. The team had to create a complex series of links, light enough not to cause engine stress but able to withstand water, which would link each of the 12 panels to the engine.

The RAD has several other design touches, including making the edges of the panels softer than the rest of the plastic device so that the creatures struggle to come out (which makes me sad to think but I know that it is important to study these animals so that I'm not recovering) are not accidentally amputated. In addition, there are gaps between each panel so that pressure does not build up inside when RAD returns to the surface.

"I see this as a platform technology that we hope will continue to evolve.The dream is to enclose delicate deep sea animals, to take 3D images that include properties such as hardness, to 3D print this animal to the surface and to have a "toothbrush" that tickles the body to get its complete genome.Then we would let it go, "says Gruber au Verge

The basic RAD organization, as mentioned previously, can be extended for catching larger species, and Teoh even says that it might someday be possible to develop a human-sized version, which could have applications in the auto- construction in outer space, and the current remote-controlled RAD could in the future be transformed into an automated trap using sensors to detect the passage of a creature.

The 3D printing helped us sample the bottom of the ocean and clean the debris from its shorelines, help the coral reefs and quietly observe the marine life. Now, this 3D printed origami mechanism can help us safely capture soft-bodied organisms for study purposes.

Gruber believes, and I agree, that this type of advanced technology is absolutely necessary to explore our oceans without causing more harm to the myriad of creatures that call them home. We are only scratching the surface when it comes to determining the importance of a role that marine life – from the smallest sea cucumber to the most massive coral reef – can play in the ocean. 39, global ecosystem of the ocean.

The team published an article on their development of RAD in the journal Science Robotics that you can read here. Co-authors are Teoh, Brennan T. Phillips, Kaitlyn P. Becker, Griffin Whittredge, James C. Weaver, Chuck Hoberman, Gruber, and Robert J. Wood.

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