I've been trying to think of a practical application since you posted this last night, and I have yet to come up with one. I'll let you know when I figure something out though. Stay tunes.

How about folding paper hats for the handless.

Origami help for tech design

"Origami - the Japanese art of folding paper to make models - is being put to a new use - to help engineers design, amongst other things, new telescopes and cars.

Exploiting the study of the way that paper folds, known as computational origami, can reveal both better ways to construct objects and also predict how they will respond to certain pressures."

Wonders never cease. an actual use. I didn't think it was possible.

Great article! So there are some applications for origami mathematics... However, still nothing about robotic folding in particular, just the concepts behind folding. It seems that with the TreeMaker software mentioned, having an automatic way to do it for real isn't necessary, unless you are mass producing. Is his research into robotic folding just silly then?

what about when electronics can be printed out on paper? like a personal fabricator? maybe a robot can be used to fold the stuff to become whatever eletronic thing people want.

I was thinking about this wired article:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.01/designworks.html

Ok, Brette, I think you win. I think anything useful (not just ornamental origami) that could be made by a lightweight desktop folding factory would be more elegant than the 3D prototype printing process that currently exists, which is more "brute force".