Automatic Lego paper airplane machine

A post on Twitter (now X) grabbed my attention this week. It was a simple video of an automatic paper airplane folding machine created by Ken Lego (Lego Technique Club, Osaka University, Japan). Osaka University LEGO Users Group (OULUG) is the only university-based LEGO Users Group in the world to be officially recognised by the LEGO Group. Managed mostly by university students, the group aims to help visitors enjoy science through LEGO.

I wasn’t alone in being amazed at this Lego Technic build. As of November 4th 2023, the video is well on its way to 900,000 views and has received over 6,000 likes. Perhaps the best signal of interest is the fact that over 800 people have bookmarked it on Twitter, which usually means they want to revisit the post later and share it with others.

This is version 3 of Ken Lego’s paper airplane system. On the Ken Logo channel on YouTube, you will find this longer video of version 3 and earlier versions. It is very interesting to see how the design has been simplified with each version. Earlier versions remind me more of old laser printers and photocopier mechanisms, whereas version 3 is clearly inspired, I would say, by the minimalist paper-handling design of a modern budget inkjet printer.

Clearly, the ability to feed a sheet of A4 photocopier paper into one side of this Lego Technic machine and have it folded and then launched automatically is very impressive.

From an educational perspective, this project is probably only suitable for Higher Education (HE), as the skills, knowledge, time and patience required are so great. However, I do think it would inspire younger children in secondary education to research and build simpler machines.

From an HE perspective, the refinement of this project through versions 1, 2 and 3 could make an interesting research project.