The Robot Compiler (RoCo) is a robotics codesign and fabrication environment to help the general public create their own robots. This image shows a script to generate regular ngons (upper right), several programmatically-generated, regular n-gons (left), and the Robot Compiler registered as an Blender Addon for our development purposes (lower right).
The script is an exploratory step in generating parameterized polygons. The script takes as input the desired number of sides and side length; as output, the script creates a 2D regular n-gon corresponding to the input. Although the script is currently limited to regular ngons, the functions are extensible to irregular polygons.
In addition to geometry, RoCo will account for the material used to fabricate the robot (see 'class Material' in the script). Different materials, such as paper and cardboard, have very different fabrication requirements. For example, when fabricating with paper, we may fold many sheets of paper over itself, because the thickness of the paper is negligible; however, with cardboard, the thickness prevents us from folding many sheets over itself. There are many other similar issues relating to inherent properties of the material, including joints, cutting method, folding style, etc.