Huffington Magazine Issue 54 | Page 32

SCOTT BARBOUR/GETTY IMAGES Voices In my talk, I mentioned that the Strandbeest — kinetic sculptures built of PVC pipe that can walk on their own, powered by the wind— would develop a digital brain. But it turns out that working with an analogue brain is much simpler and weighs far less. The “brain” of the animal, which is actually a digital step counter, works — but is a lot of work to make, and it uses up extra walking units simply to carry the brain itself. In fact, it’s much easier to connect a pump to one leg and let it pump air into PET bottles with every step. As soon as the pressure exceeds a certain limit, an air switch turns over, and the animal knows it walked a certain distance. These days, the beasts only walk parallel to the coast when the wind THEO JANSEN blows either southwest or northeast. They walk back and forth between two places on the Dutch coast: Kijkduin and Scheveningen. In a way, Strandbeests have turned into migration animals, and the step counter gives them an idea of where they are. While counting their steps, they know more or less where they are between Kijkduin and Scheveningen. Even more exciting is that they’ve seemed to develop a fas- TED and The Huffington Post are excited to bring you TEDWeekends, a curated weekend program that introduces a powerful “idea worth spreading” every Friday, anchored in an exceptional TEDTalk. This week’s TEDTalk is accompanied by an original blog post from the featured speaker, along with new op-eds, thoughts and responses from the HuffPost community. Watch the talk above, read the blog post and tell us your thoughts below. Become part of the conversation! HUFFINGTON 06.23.13 The Strandbeest, made completely out of plastic tubes and bottles, uses a digital stepcounter as its “brain” while walking with the wind.