“Strandbeest” Linkage
Purpose: Made famous by Dutch artist Theo Jansen, the Strandbeest is what he describes to be a kinetic sculpture. The brilliance in his design lies in it's energy efficiency, as it requires minimal power and capable of running entirely off wind energy. A relatively new linkage still under optimization for application in mobile robotics and gait analysis, Jansen’s linkage is classified as a single degree of freedom, planar, 11 mobile link mechanism. What this means is that only the crank rotates — all other linkages are fixed and dependent solely on the crank’s circular path. I removed all of the supports and sails to recreate the underlying linkage which makes this sculpture possible by using a top-down assembly in SolidWorks. It’s mesmerizing to watch the organic and human-like ovoid footpath, even with just a single leg.