The recent success achieved by U.S. researchers in crafting the world's first folding or transformable robot opens the door to a wide array of future applications.

One of these is a "folding satellite" that could be launched into orbit as flat panels that transform into a satellite in orbit.

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Engineers now have the experience to build satellites that can assemble themselves once they're in space, believes Sam Felton, one the Harvard engineers that made the transformer robot made from paper.

Only this week, researchers Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology invented the first functioning "transformer robot" made from a sheet of paper and plastic scraps.

Using the Japanese paper-folding art origami, a team of engineers and researchers created the first robot that can fold itself into arbitrary shapes without any intervention from a human operator.

As soon as batteries were attached to the robot, the flat sheet of paper transformed into a complex machine with four legs and started crawling away in a span of just four minutes.

Engineers draw their inspiration in building this transformer robot from nature and its ability to assemble itself, like the way linear sequences in amino acids fold into complex proteins.

Rob Wood from Harvard said that getting a robot assemble itself and function properly is a milestone engineers have been chasing for many years.

The origami or transformer-like robot had a full electromechanical system embedded into a flat paper sheet. The electromechanical system consisted of two motors, two batteries and a microcontroller served as the robot's brain

The transformer-like robot had a timer that activated after 10 seconds.

Felton said that modifications to the triggers could be made to improve the design. Triggers activated by environmental factors such as temperature and pressure could be made to fold a robot.

Despite this success, Felton admitted that one of the primary challenges in the process was the propensity of the robots to burn up before folding properly.

He believes researchers can improve the robot based on the first transformable robot they built. Researchers plan to experiment on different kinds of polymers that are stronger and better able to withstand heat.