Designing Planar Deployable Objects via Scissor Structures

Scissor structure is used to generate deployable objects for space-saving in a variety of applications, from architecture to aerospace science. While deployment from a small, regular shape to a larger one is easy to design, we focus on a more challenging task: designing a planar scissor structure that deploys from a given source shape into a specific target shape. We propose a two-step constructive method to generate a scissor structure from a high-dimensional parameter space. Topology construction of the scissor structure is first performed to approximate the two given shapes, as well as to guarantee the deployment. Then the geometry of the scissor structure is optimized in order to minimize the connection deflections and maximize the shape approximation. With the optimized parameters, the deployment can be simulated by controlling an anchor scissor unit. Physical deployable objects are fabricated according to the designed scissor structures by using 3D printing or manual assembly. We show a number of results for different shapes to demonstrate that even with fabrication errors, our designed structures can deform fluently between the source and target shapes.