In the summer of 2002, I and Hidekazu Takahashi started a project of Computational Origami. I have been interested in origami since my boyhood. My interest in origami is revitalized by many interesting resarch results by mathematicians and and computer scientists around the end of 1980s. The talk of Corado Boehm, at IFIP 1.6 WG meeting in Utrecht, 2001, who suggested to implement and analyze his set of origami axioms was the start of my actual involvement of computational rigami.
The real progress started when I met Hidekazu Takahashi at AGA conference in Volos, Greece in the summer of 2002. After we returned to Japan,we met in Tsukuba and desinged the basic framework of the origami system. Then, we started to build the computational origami system in Mathematica.
Computational origami is to create origami by means of computation. Namely, given a set of formulas obtained by observing geometric properties of origami, by repeated transformation of them, we derive new set of formulas that describe new origami.
Although some origamists are interested in both artistic and mathematical aspects of origami, there are quite separate research issues involved. We are interested in both aspects of origami, but as a resarch strategy, we separate them and pursue two different goals.