Application in other fields touches on all aspects of modern life

Origami has many applications across a number of fields, including engineering, architecture, biomedicine, nanotechnology, aerospace and robotics.

Just as origami master Robert Lang writes in his personal website, “the world of mathematics might seem far removed from the world of art, but mathematics both describes and enables the creation of beautiful forms. Furthermore, the same mathematical description that lets us create folded art also allows us to solve realworld practical problems in the fields of science, engineering, technology, medicine and more”.

According to Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, origami principles have been used to design heart stents that fold up to a tiny size and then unfold to open clogged arteries. They have also been applied for airbags that release effectively during automobile collisions, and even to unfurl the large sunshade for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

In 2016, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Sheffield and the Tokyo Institute of Technology demonstrated that a tiny origami robot can unfold from a swallowed capsule and remove a button battery stuck to the wall of a simulated stomach.

In 2019, scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences applied origami to the atomic scale. They managed to precisely fold graphene — an atom-thick sheet of carbon — into customized shapes, which could eventually pave the way for new powerful computer processors.

From paper frogs to space telescopes, the ancient craft has evolved and the algorithms and theorems in it have shed light in real life.