Patent ID: 7941978

Claim:
A collapsible and deployable hierarchical open lattice assembly comprised of a plurality of cube-shaped hub boxes and trusses connecting two or more hub boxes together, said assembly comprised of: a. a plurality of cube-shaped hub boxes; 1) each hub box comprised of a hinge node located at each corner of said hub box with straight and rigid rods connecting said hinge nodes so as to form a cube-shaped box with 3 rods extending from each hinge node at 90-degree angles from each other; 2) each hinge node comprised of a structural node and 3 or more resilient joints, each resilient joint comprised of; (a) a flexure comprised of a resilient material; (b) said flexure being attached to said structural node at one end and to a rigid rod at the opposite end; (c) said flexure having a neutral shape with a restorative moment being created in the flexure when the flexure is deformed from the neutral shape and with the restorative moment tending to return the flexure to the neutral shape; (d) the neutral shape of said flexures being the deployed state in which the attached rods form a cube-shaped hub box; (e) each resilient joint being capable only of rotating 90 degrees in a single plane; and b. one or more trusses connecting two or more hub boxes, said trusses comprised of four straight and rigid longerons connecting four hinge nodes of a first hub box by said resilient joints to four hinge nodes of a second hub box by said resilient joints with the neutral shape of the flexures of the trusses' resilient joints being the deployed state, whereby multiple hub boxes connected by longerons may create a hierarchical truss of trusses in either two or three dimensions that can be collapsed first into two dimensions and then into a single dimension.