How a Harvard Professor Uses Toys and Origami to Transform Design

[Narrator] This is the best-known example

of Chuck Hoberman's work.

It's called the Hoberman sphere,

and it's one of the most iconic toys to come out of the 90s.

I didn't expect that the sphere

would become such a popular toy,

and it wasn't what I was actually looking for.

[Narrator] What he was actually after

was much more ambitious.

My career has been about an unusual form of design,

and it's about a question that I ask myself,

how can I make an object transform

the way we see clouds transforming in the sky

or a time lapse of a flower unfolding?

What if we could make objects,

physical objects in our lives, that actually do that?

[Narrator] Over the past several decades,

he's designed all kinds of transformable objects, from toys.

And in turns inside out.

[Narrator] To large structures, to materials like these,

which might one day be used to build

pop-up shelters for disaster relief

or scaled way, way down to create things

like better stents for cardiac patients.

But to understand how this all works,

there's really only one place to start.

This is the Hoberman sphere.

People look at it and they go, well how does it do that?

And it's a funny question to me

because it's not like a piece of electronics

where it's hidden away in a box.

You see everything about the sphere.

It's doing it, really, because of the magic of geometry.

There's about 400 individual plastic pieces,

and you can see that there are pentagons and triangles.

But it's also made up of six rings

that intersect each other to form those shapes.

But of course, the unique thing about it

is that the shapes are not static, they're dynamic.

I'm putting energy into this to make it open and close,

but my motions are just a push and a pull.

The transformation is the 400 individual pieces

all moving along their programmed path

towards the center of the sphere like that,

and then radiating out, expanding universe style like that.

And a lot of what I do is about that basic trick,

taking a push or a pull and converting that energy

into the process of physical transformation.

[Narrator] Oddly enough, the Hoberman sphere

wasn't actually designed to be a toy.

I wasn't really a toy maker.

I backed my way into that.

For me, as the author of it,

I was interested in all this serious stuff,

and yet somehow this fascination

with math and materials and mechanics became something

that a five year old could relate to perfectly.

[Narrator] At first, it was just about

solving an engineering problem, how to create a sphere

that could shape-shift in a natural way.

After several dead ends, he discovered a new way

to make a simple scissor mechanism,

that is, two links connected by a pivot.

And that mechanism had a unique geometric property.

As it unfolded, the angle formed

by its endpoints didn't change.

You can see that here with the dotted lines.

In other words, he could now design a sphere

that changes its size while maintaining the same shape.

By figuring out the geometry, he was able to build this,

an 800 pound motorized sphere that's still suspended

in New Jersey's Liberty Science Center.

[Chuck] It's been there for about 25 years,

opening and closing all day long.

[Narrator] One thing he noticed early on

is that kids were especially drawn to it.

That's when a light bulb went off.

I thought, you know something?

Maybe we could just put this in a box and sell it as a toy.

[Narrator] After the sphere put him on the map,

he started getting opportunities in entertainment,

like this giant aluminum curtain he created

for the 2002 Winter Olympics,

or the 4,000 square foot shape-shifting video screen

that his firm co-produced for U2's 360 Tour.

More recently, he helped with the initial concept

for the Atlanta Falcons' new retractable roof,

which opens and closes like an iris.

Beyond all these wildly different projects is

one central idea, something he calls transformable design.

Most designed objects are static through their lifetime

and eventually they're disposed of.

I'm looking for kind of a different angle on it,

which is, what if those objects

were dynamic and alive and in movement around us,

in order to create new experiences, of course,

but also to give us actual functional benefits.

[Narrator] Hoberman started out as a sculptor

before getting his master's in engineering,

and he brings an artistic eye to all of his projects.

But many of his designs have functional uses, too.

Where is transformation going?

Where is this concept going?

There's so many different possibilities.

Adaptive buildings would be one.

Buildings where the space will transform

according to different uses, where you might have

a big open lobby that lots of rooms can suddenly appear

as needed, and then disappear when they're not needed.

[Narrator] Or, for a more practical example,

take this tent he designed.

It's 800 square feet, and it would

normally take hours to assemble.

This version goes up in minutes.

To see how it works, take a look at the miniature version.

All of the pieces are hinged together

so there's no need to assemble it one piece at a time.

But these days, he's moving beyond

his classic joints and hinges approach,

thanks to a surprisingly old school technique, origami.

Up until about 20 years ago,

origami was a craft and an art.

Now, it's a topic of math, engineering, robotics,

structures, that's being studied in all of its full glory.

Think of it.

A flat sheet can be folded into a bird, say.

But mathematicians have actually shown

that a flat sheet can be folded into any shape at all.

What I think of when I do that is not

how can I transform that sheet

with all of this very complicated folding with my hands,

but how can I do it where you push a button

and it folds from flat to form automatically?

[Narrator] His latest obsession is to design

large scale origami structures

that'll expand and contract at the push of a button.

To build them, he cuts out sheets of plastic

with this robotic arm, and then

connects them together in various shapes.

There's some really challenging problems.

There's the challenge of what materials you use,

and especially the challenge of how do you actually

make a big origami structure get bigger and smaller?

What is the automation of it?

What are the motors or the forces that you need

to make the transformation happen?

And the area that I've identified

that seems very promising is inflation.

This is an origami piece that's wrapped with a seal

so that we can inflate it and deflate it.

I'm going to put on air pressure now,

and you'll see it inflate.

And then I can

put a vacuum on

and that will pull it closed.

[Narrator] Breakthroughs in origami design

could lead to all kinds of new inventions.

From foldable furniture and buildings

to micro-robotics and noninvasive medical devices.

Why do I wanna make objects transform?

I could say it's to help humanity,

and I think in some sense it is.

But it's because I'm an inventor,

and I love coming up with ideas

that have not been tried out before.