  Kirigami, the Japanese art of paper cutting, has recently enabled the design
of stretchable mechanical metamaterials that can be easily realized by
embedding arrays of periodic cuts into an elastic sheet. Here, we exploit
kirigami principles to design inflatables that can mimic target shapes upon
pressurization. Our system comprises a kirigami sheet embedded into an
unstructured elastomeric membrane. First, we show that the inflated shape can
be controlled by tuning the geometric parameters of the kirigami pattern. Then,
by applying a simple optimization algorithm, we identify the best parameters
that enable the kirigami inflatables to transform into a family of target
shapes at a given pressure. Furthermore, thanks to the tessellated nature of
the kirigami, we show that we can selectively manipulate the parameters of the
single units to allow the reproduction of features at different scales and
ultimately enable a more accurate mimicking of the target.
