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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-
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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.