Origami is the ancient Japanese art of paper folding. One uncut square of paper can, in the hands of an origami artist, be folded into a bird, a frog, a sailboat, or a Japanese samurai helmet beetle.

Origami might seem like an unlikely source of inspiration for scientists and engineers, yet the centuries-old Japanese art of paper folding is behind all sorts of new innovations. That’s because ...

A study published in Nature Communications presents a way to create deployable structures that transform from compact folded states into expansive configurations with perfectly smooth surfaces.