More than 5,000 years after the invention of the wheel, Dutch artist Theo Jansen gives us a new wheel, and one that can walk on sand. Anyone that has tried to ride their bicycle on the beach knows the basic wheel can have it’s serious drawbacks.
The artist’s amazing moving sculptures are made of hollow tubes, and use wind power and advanced, bearings, or “joints” that function similar to human hips in the way they preserve balance, to travel across the lonely beaches he leaves them to wander on. He has named each of his “animals”, or strandbeests, and equipped them with a simple “brain” that, when informed by the sensors of water or an obstacle in the way, steers the animal in the opposite direction. He helps them here and there, but says once perfected they will be able to wander the beaches on their own indefinitely, autonomous and self-sustaining.
Watch the video below, it’s unreal.