Reinventing the zipper

重塑拉链

With an adaptable fastener designed at CSAIL, pitching a tent or adjusting the cast for a broken bone could be almost as easy as zipping your coat. 在麻省理工学院计算机科学与人工智能实验室（CSAIL）设计出一种自适应紧固件后，搭建帐篷或调整骨折后的石膏支具，可能就像拉上外套拉链一样简单。

The researchers, led by associate professor Stefanie Mueller, were inspired by an abandoned prototype for a three-sided zipper that William Freeman, PhD ’92 (now an MIT professor), patented in the mid-1980s. 由副教授 Stefanie Mueller 领导的研究团队，其灵感来自于 20 世纪 80 年代中期由 William Freeman（1992 届博士，现为麻省理工学院教授）申请专利的一款三面拉链原型，该原型此前已被搁置。

With software they created, people can design customized versions of this fastener to be 3D-printed in plastic. Its three flexible “arms” can then form different types of rigid objects when zipped together. 通过他们开发的软件，人们可以设计出定制版的紧固件，并使用塑料进行 3D 打印。当这些紧固件的三个柔性“臂”拉合在一起时，可以形成不同类型的刚性物体。

Users can select the strips’ length and the direction and angle at which they’ll bend. They can also choose whether the zipped-up device will appear straight, bent, coiled, or twisted. 用户可以选择条带的长度，以及它们弯曲的方向和角度。他们还可以选择拉合后的装置呈现出笔直、弯曲、盘绕或扭曲的状态。

A tent making use of the zipper takes just 80 seconds to set up. A wrist cast that incorporates it can be tightened and loosened as desired. A motor can even be added so that, for example, a robot’s leg heights could change with the push of a button. 使用这种拉链的帐篷仅需 80 秒即可搭建完成。结合了该技术的腕部石膏支具可以根据需要随时收紧或放松。甚至还可以添加电机，例如，只需按下一个按钮，就能改变机器人的腿部高度。

“A regular zipper is great for closing up flat objects, like a jacket, but Freeman ideated something more dynamic,” says MIT postdoc Jiaji Li, a lead author on a paper presenting the project. “We’ve developed a process that builds objects you can rapidly shift from flexible to rigid, and you can be confident they’ll work in the real world.” “普通的拉链非常适合闭合扁平物体，比如夹克，但 Freeman 当初构思的是一种更具动态性的东西，”该项目论文的主要作者、麻省理工学院博士后 Jiaji Li 表示，“我们开发了一种工艺，可以构建出能在柔性和刚性之间快速切换的物体，并且你可以确信它们在现实世界中是切实可用的。”