How corner topology makes woven baskets ultra-stiff, yet ultra-resilient

Basket weaving is a craft form that has traditionally been used to create artistically appealing and practically useful three-dimensional objects such as containers, furniture, and wearable Items. However, the potential of woven systems as engineering structures remains underexplored. In this work, we uncover the unexpected stiffness and resilience advantages that woven structures offer over non-woven continuous structures. We found that the basket corner topologies, which serve as building blocks for three-dimensional basket weaving, provide unusually high stiffness and resilience. We demonstrate that under small deformation, woven corners exhibit stiffness comparable to that of continuous corners, as the constituent woven ribbons are mainly engaged in stretching instead of bending; while under large deformation, woven corners can be compressed and absorb energy multiple times without suffering noticeable damage, as woven ribbons experience local elastic buckling instead of global plastic buckling. We generalize the natural basket corner to a family of corner topologies, and we modularly assemble different corners into complex spatial structures with continuous surfaces. Using this strategy, we build woven robotic systems that can utilize flexible bending modes for locomotion yet can also be stiff and highly resilient to damage. We also build woven metasurfaces where deformation modes can be tailored to be stiff or flexible. This work demonstrates that people historically wove baskets not only because ribbons can be readily crafted, but also because woven structures have comparable stiffness and much higher resilience than if continuous sheets are used, enabling the design of metamaterials that are both stiff and damage-resilient for automotive, robotic, and architectural applications.