Kresling Origami-Based Metamaterial Robot for Dynamic Electromagnetic Control

Reconfigurable metamaterials have enabled significant progress toward tunable microwave devices, yet existing approaches are often hindered by limited mechanical reconfigurability and susceptibility to electromagnetic interference. Here, we introduce a type of metamaterial robot that harnesses bistable Kresling origami to achieve dynamic electromagnetic control. By integrating pneumatically driven folding architectures with digital light processing-printed SrTiO₃ high-permittivity ceramic patches, our design establishes a unified platform where mechanical deformation and microwave resonant behavior can be actively and synergistically regulated. The coupled extension-twisting motion inherent to the Kresling geometry simultaneously tailors the axial height, in-plane orientation, local propagation phase, and boundary conditions of the ceramic resonators, thereby modulating the excitation conditions of dielectric resonance responses across distinct frequency bands. Experimentally, transitioning a single origami unit from its folded state to its deployed state increases the number of resolvable reflection peaks from two to three, with a minimum reflectance reaching approximately -35.6 dB. Rotating the SrTiO₃ patches further shifts the dual-resonance center frequencies from 3.71-3.87 Hz and 16.72-17.26 GHz to 4.36-4.45 GHz and 16.31-16.72 GHz, respectively. Expanding this concept to a spatially heterogeneous origami array enables coupled control of both resonance peaks, yielding a minimum peak reflectance as low as -54.4 dB and a reflection modulation depth of 51.0 dB at 12 GHz.