Soft hinge for magnetically actuated millimetre-size origami

Origami-inspired folding techniques are widely applied in the fabrication and actuation of micro- and milli-robots and systems. While soft materials exhibit curved deformation when an external stimulus is applied, implementation of hinges effectively produces sharp edges in the structure. This paper presents the fabrication of millimetre size foldable elastomeric structures, the anisotropic magnetization method of the structure and the remote actuation method using a magnetic field. We specifically focused on the effect of hinges, whose presence resulted in the magnetically induced folding angle of 90±0.74° , whereas the absence resulted in the angle of 63.9±0.93°.