VIDEO: ORIGAMI ROBOT CAN LIFT 1,000 TIMES THEIR BODY WEIGHT

Harvard researchers from the Wyss Institute and MIT's computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory have developed origami-inspired robot muscles that can lift up to 1,000 times their own weight.

These soft robots, made of metal and plastic, are surrounded by air and liquid, The inspiration for it came after MIT revealed an exoskeleton robot in September, which is similarly inspired by the Japanese craft.
These origami-inspired models are encased in a plastic or textile otter 'skin' aiding their flexibility, allowing them to mimic real muscles through the use of their system controls. Air or water gives these soft, seemingly weak, 'actuators' enough strength to allow the robot to lift impressive weights.

"Artificial muscle-like actuators are one of the most important grand challenges in all of engineering", Rob Wood, professor of engineering explains. "Now that we have created actuators with properties similar to natural muscle, we can imagine building almost any robot for almost any task."

The robots' origami-like design allows it to fold into programmable patterns thus saving on space and, in some cases, costs the researchers less than a dollar to make. The actuators are part of what seems like a simpler framework for a robot, using basic materials and designing them to move in certain ways as opposed to imagining a model with infinite possibilities.

You can see the origami-robots in action in the video below.