Finding Practical Applications for Origami

The article talks about Robert J. Lang (https://langorigami.com), but he deserves more than a passing mention if we're talking about origami. He's a physicist/mathematician at NASA, an AMS Fellow, and also one of the top origamists in the world.

Here's a video showing his extraordinary origami insects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYoTCssVyJU

He wrote dozens of papers about the mathematics of origami over the years, and last year he came out with a gorgeous book on the subject: Twists, Tilings, and Tessellations: Mathematical Methods for Geometric Origami (https://www.amazon.com/Twists-Tilings-Tessellations-Mathemat...)

He also has a bunch of origami books with "regular" animal models, but they tend to be on the complex end of the spectrum, so they're not for beginner origamists.

He also developed TreeMaker, which is a software tool for systematically designing folding patterns from a model specification: https://langorigami.com/article/treemaker/ (some of his complex insect models are based on TreeMaker folding patterns)

As someone interested in algorithms, Erik Demaine's work (and that of other researchers in the domain) on computational origami is fascinating. It basically boils down to, given a 3D shape, find a way to fold a 2D sheet to reproduce it.

https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/origami-anything

Robby Kraft gave a wonderful talk, "Origami Software from Scratch", at Strange Loop 2017:

https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2017/origami-software-from-sc...

There is a great documentary about origami called "Between the Folds" if anyone is interested. It goes into the historical, cultural, practical, mathematical, artistic and current aspects of origami.

I really enjoyed the Chuck Hoberman [1] show @ Le Laboratoire Cambridge [2].

Kenneth Snelson's Needle Tower [3] also shares some of the same design elements.

[1] http://www.hoberman.com/

[2] https://www.lelaboratoirecambridge.com/22-10-degrees

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needle_Tower

NOVA did an episode a couple years ago on this, season 44, episode 5, "The Origami Revolution", which can be watched online here [1].

[1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/the-origami-revolution

Article has some nice examples from medical tweezers to folding of objects that are going to space.

Origami maps are a thing

http://www.britishorigami.info/academic/mathematics/the-miur...

And TIL there's a British Origami Society!