Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
After teaming up with YouTuber and mechanical engineer Mark Rober to create the world's tiniest working Nerf-style blaster in 2023, BYU mechanical engineers set out to test the limits of compliant mechanism scalability. Using the exact design that was created for Rober's microscopic ant-battling blaster, the team cut out a massive prototype from one piece of polypropylene, to create a giant functional launcher with no gears or moving parts.
In January, BYU's Compliant Mechanisms and Robotics Group published new research on scalability of compliant mechanisms with co-author Rober, a BYU engineering graduate and former NASA scientist, in the journal PLOS One: (doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0340272). Understanding the scalability of compliant mechanisms is important because it allows for testing of small-scale prototypes which can then be adapted to full-scale devices that can be used in space or other applications.
See compliantmechanisms.byu.edu for free maker resources and tutorials about origami-inspired engineering. Mark Rober's YouTube video "World's Smallest Nerf Gun Shoots an Ant,"
which inspired this new research, currently has more than 75 million views.
After teaming up with YouTuber and mechanical engineer Mark Rober to create the world's tiniest working Nerf-style blaster in 2023, BYU mechanical engineers set out to test the limits of compliant mechanism scalability. Using the exact design that was created for Rober's microscopic ant-battling blaster, the team cut out a massive prototype from one piece of polypropylene, to create a giant functional launcher with no gears or moving parts.
In January, BYU's Compliant Mechanisms and Robotics Group published new research on scalability of compliant mechanisms with co-author Rober, a BYU engineering graduate and former NASA scientist, in the journal PLOS One: (doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0340272). Understanding the scalability of compliant mechanisms is important because it allows for testing of small-scale prototypes which can then be adapted to full-scale devices that can be used in space or other applications.
See compliantmechanisms.byu.edu for free maker resources and tutorials about origami-inspired engineering. Mark Rober's YouTube video "World's Smallest Nerf Gun Shoots an Ant,"
which inspired this new research, currently has more than 75 million views.
