Searching around for videos of Theo Jansen talking about his Strandbeests (his new one, Umerus, will be in the Quarry Park from July 2nd - 12th) I stumbled upon a glut of videos of Lego Strandbeests, made by people inspired by his work to test his theories in plastic brick form.
Here’s a rather creepy eight legged spider:
and here’s a detailed analysis of the walking technique from the University of Alberta:
Both of those are battery powered which goes against one of the principles of Jansen’s work - that the creatures should be autonomous and powered by the elements. Here’s an attempt at a wind-powered Legobeest:
But it seems electricity is the way forward if you really want to explore the engineering of the things. Check out the speed of this beastie:
I believe these are built using the Lego Mindstorms system and there are a few projects on the lego.com site. Here’s one for an “Animalis Hexapod”.
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