Toward Ternary Computing Enabled by Origami-Inspired Modular Architectures

Abstract Modern mechanical computing, being envisioned as a pathway toward structure- and material-level processing, holds potential for intelligent metamaterials and robotics in extreme environments. However, current computing architectures remain constrained by binary paradigms. Here, we introduce an origami-inspired modular architecture that encodes logical mappings into its inherent kinematic responses under an input-output decoupled paradigm, enabling both binary and ternary mechanical computing. Within this emerging paradigm, the multi-stable states of two Kresling origami configurations serve as physical carriers for generating discrete signals, while torsional transitions among these states ensure signal switching, supporting operations from logic gates to advanced arithmetic. Based on this mechanical architecture, we systematically demonstrate seven common logic gates and modular arithmetic half- and full-adders in both binary and ternary systems, revealing challenges and opportunities in advancing multi-valued logic through comparative analysis. The physical platform, along with its accompanying response-programming strategy, represents a simplified and generalized paradigm that supports migration to higher-level mechanical computing mechanisms.