The word, origami, comes from the traditional Japanese art of paper folding. By using this origami structure, the deformable wheel can be built without using many mechanical parts; the wheel is built with a single piece of sheet, with specific folds. Moreover, because of the characteristic that the structure constrains its own movement, it is possible to control the shape of the wheel using only a few actuators. The proposed design for the deformable wheel shows the possibility of using origami structure as a functional structure with its own mechanism.
The deformable wheel robot use the ball-shaped waterbomb origami pattern, so-called magic-ball pattern. The magic-ball origami pattern is a well-known pattern that changes its shape from a long cylindrical tube to a flat circular tube. By using this special structure, a wheel with mechanical functionalities can be achieved.