Oribotics - the art/science of robotic origami

Tanteidan Monthly Meeting June

Origami Tanteidan meets every month. Tanteidan means investigate, or investigators, and the icon for Tanteidan is a magnifying glass aka Sherlock Holmes. The Japanese Origami Academic Society or JOAS runs the meetings and also the yearly convention in Tokyo. The network of conventions extends beyond Tokyo, in the Kansai region, Shizuoka region are yearly events also, though the Tokyo one is by far the largest.

Spot the aussie

Anyway… I went to the June meeting today…

What every oriboticist needs in Tokyo

It had to be done… check out the bikes home page for full details- www.strida.com

Oritatami means folding bike - and this one folds the smallest and quickest - though the triangle shape is unusual but very strong…

Pierre Bastien

While not strictly on the subject of oribotics, Pierre’s work relates to oribotics field of research. Simple mechanisms made using domestic materials - MECCANO! - to play musical instruments, he’s been working for a long time since 1977 it seems.

Check out his site http://www.pierrebastien.com

First day awake in Tokyo

Woke today at 4am to find the sun rising, and the local park closed until 9am, so I jumped the fence and practiced my tai chi anyway (it seemed relatively harmless - and I reasoned that the times were probably only there to keep homeless people from building tents there).

mY Trinh and I went to Ginza, to the Apple store to buy an Airport Express - tiny very handy wireless network is now in our tiny very handy apartment. We checked out the sony store, and played with the undeniably cute AIBO - the 6th generation is very interesting. We walked to ITO-YA so mY could get her sketch books and pencils for her animation. Then Tokyo showed me its reasoning for redunancy and consumerism. They make a prepaid phone with a built in SIM card. If the card expires the phone becomes useless and you have to buy another. To learn this I was given alot of help by a non english speaking Japanese service attendant at Yodabashi Camera in Shinjuku. Now I have to find out who will help me get another phone. They are a necessity here.

Dorkbot Ghent - May 2005 - the final frontier

dorkfest attracted a mixed crown of artists, geeks, friends, and interested art seekers. The format is somewhere between a party and a new media exhibition. The format shifts from presentations and talks to demonstrations and installations to performances of electronic music and new media interactive works. The late evening is usually a DJ or e-music set, which gets the beer soaked belgian folks up dancing.

Oribotic Paper Crane

This project was shown to me by Jun Maekawa during his recent visit to Australia. He described a meticulously crafted machine which would take the papercrane from flat folded form to its 3D form with a {simple?} mechanism.

Oribotic Orizuru Mechanism

Integrated Instruments

The idea is this: the miniature musical instruments being created by Rosemary Joy are integrated into the design of the oribots. They are low impact percussive instruments, like small reeds, bells, or tuned metal forks, that are played by the gearing mechanism in the bot.

By the term low impact, I mean they require little friction to operate. Though with clever gearing they can be made to work under load.

This increases the sophistication of the design, but it does allow Rosemary to focus on a particular type of musical instrument. She could also consider wind instruments using a tiny pneumatic system - though nice as an idea, should be carefully considered regarding design to make them small and lightweight.

About Oribotics [Expanded]

This blog will cover the development of Oribotics [expanded] during Matt Gardiner’s artistic residency in Tokyo, Japan. The intention of the blog is to communicate ideas, and developments as they happen, so that all artists collaborating on the project have up to date information and can follow the work in progress.