Strandbeest

A Presentation of this can be found here (Strandbeest presentation by John Walker)

 

Strandbeests are wind-powered sculptures made of stiff plastic tubes that are designed to

walk self-propelled on beaches. The name ‘Strandbeest’ literally translates to ‘Beach-beast’ in English.

The animals are constantly evolving, but before that, it had to be originally designed. The legs follow a geometrical equation in order for the foot to describe a particular shape to create a movement of the leg that enables the ‘hips’ to stay level.
In order for this to happen, the parts of the leg need to be at certain lengths. That each part of the leg can have 10 different sizes….

There are twelve parts to each leg, so that would mean that there are over 10,000,000,000,000 possible curves of movement.

This would take 100,000 years to calculate through computer simulation.

 

These are the 11 holy numbers as given by Theo Jansen himself.

a = 38, b = 41.5, c = 39.3, d = 40.1, e = 55.8, f = 39.4, g = 36.7,h = 65.7, i = 49, j = 50, k = 61.9, l=7.8* m=15*

*These two are not always included in diagrams.

 

This is the optimal arrangement for the

pieces of the legs. This allows the rotation of the legs to create a natural looing movement keeping the hips of the animal level, as seen below.

 

 

This Mechanism is more efficient then wheels that also keep the axle at a horizontal level because it allows more movement with less work. The wheel will need the surface to make contact with the ground at every point where as the foot simply steps over it.