Theo Jansen

Introduction

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Introduction to Kinetic Art 12 Important Artists 16

Biography

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Interview One 30

Interview Two 40 The March of Strandbeests 56 Mechanism 130

References

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Theo Jansen

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5 Introduction

Legged robots has always been a favorite for researchers where the application involves maneuverability over rough terrain, especially such priority is obvious in comparison to traditional wheeled, or tracked robotic platforms. Sebastian et al [1] present their efforts in developing a six legged, bio-inspired, and energy efficient robot, SpaceClimber 1 for extraterrestrial surface exploration, paying special attention to mobility in lunar craters. Estremera et al [2] elaborates with simulation and experiments the development of crab and turning gaits for hexpod robot, SILO-6 deployments in demining applications often characterized by uneven terrains and forbidden zones.

Federico et al [3] proposes an approach to directly map a range of gaits of a horse to a quadruped robot with an intention of generating a more life-like locomotion cycle.

The work also presents the use of kinematic motion primitives in generating valid and stable walking, trotting and galloping gaits that are tested on a compliant quadruped robot. In many of these research works, the robots developed are generally highly effective in mimicking the gait cycles of their biological counterparts but they suffer from low payload to machine-load ratio and high energy consumption. Several approaches are being studied in developing energy efficient walking machines.

Sanz-Meodio et al [4] presents a set of rules towards improving energy efficiency in statically stable walking robots extracted to careful dynamic simulation and analysis of two legged, mammal and insect. configurations for a hexapod robotic platform.

Gonzalez de Santos et al [5] applies minimization criteria for optimizing energy consumption in a hexapod robot over every half a locomotion cycle especially while walking on uneven terrains. Roy et al [6] put forward two different approaches to determine optimal feet forces and joint torques for six legged robots towards minimizing energy consumption. Even though these works focuses on the energy optimization problem, still the robots experimented in these works involves a series of links with multiple actuators to realize walking motion.

An unconventional approach was presented by Theo Jansen [7], a Dutch kinetic artist that requires actuation at only a single joint to realize walking involving multiple legs through mapping of internal cyclic gaits into elliptical ones. Various aspects of Theo Jansen mechanism has been studied by a number of researchers. Kazuma et al [8] proposes an extension of the Theo Jansen mechanism by introducing an additional up-down motion in the linkage center for realizing new gait cycles with about ten times the height of original for climbing over obstacles. vector loop and simple geometric

6 Introduction

methods are used in conjunction with software tools such as ProEngineer and SAM for analyzing forward kinematics of the Theo Jansen mechanism by Moldovan [9].

An attempt to optimize the leg geometry of Theo Jansen mechanism using genetic algorithm is presented by Ingram et al [10]. The work explores the stability limits and tractive abilities while validating the kinematic and kinetic models through experiments involving hardware prototypes. Daniel et al [11] conducts a preliminary dynamic analysis using the superposition method with the intention of optimizing Theo Jansen mechanism. But, the work is incomplete with no details on the equivalent Lagrange’s equation.

A complete dynamic analysis involving constraint force and equivalent Lagrange’s equation of motion are necessary for any meaningful extension and/or optimization of the Theo Jansen mechanism. In this paper, we present a complete dynamic analysis of the Theo Jansen mechanism using the projection method proposed by Blajer [12]. In comparison to the conventional approaches of Lagrange’s, GibbsAppel, and Kane’s, the projection method utilized in this paper has been observed to be intuitive in nature and compact (Arczewski et al. [13], Maruyama [14], Ohsaki et al. [15]).

The work presented in this paper is part of our ongoing efforts in developing a nested reconfigurable Theo Jansen mechanism which is capable of both interand intra- reconfiguration capabilities. With Theo Jansen mechanism at its core, the platform being developed is expected to possess individual robots capable of changing their morphologies (intra-reconfigurability) as well as combining with other homogeneous/heterogeneous robots to generate more complex morphologies (interreconfigurability). In Summary, we hypothesize that the research and development of nested reconfigurable Theo Jansen mechanism robot has high academic value and practical impact. For which, complete dynamics analysis of Theo Jansen mechanism is an essential but complex step.

Therefore, the dynamic analysis is conducted in this paper using the projection method. The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the dynamic modeling of Jansen linkage is presented that consists of Forepaw and backpaw modeling cum complete system equations. In Section 3, numerical simulation preformed using MaTX are presented. Finally, concluding remarks are presented in Section 4.

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9 Modeling of Jansen Linkage

A schematic figure of the jansen link mechanism is shown in Fig. 1. As shown in Fig. 1, the jansen link mechanism under study in this paper is a four legged model that can be actuated with only one motor, where input torque is driven to driving link. And, the driving link is constrained on origin of the Descartes coordinates. Also, the same jansen link mechanisms is utilized for constructing the other legs of the robot. Hence, the motion equations of the Theo Jansen mechanism modelled as a system can be derived by integrating the component motion equations of forepaw and backpaw models. In this paper, the motion equations of forepaw are derived as a first step, and then the ones of backpaw are derived in the second step. Finally, the motion equations of the whole system are derived integrating the motion equations of the prior.

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Synopsis kinetic Art

Intriduction to Kinetic art

Kinetic art is a manifestation of the fascination with motion which defines a whole swathe of modern art from Impressionism onwards.

In presenting works of art which moved, or which gave the impression of movement from mobile, mechanical sculptures to Op art paintings which seemed to rotate or vibrate in front of the eyes - Kinetic artists offered us some of the most quintessential expressions of modern art’s concern with presenting rather than representing living reality. Tracing its origins to the Dada and Constructivist movements of the 1910s, Kinetic art grew into a lively avant-garde after the Second World War, especially following the genre-defining group exhibition Le Mouvement, held in Paris in 1955. The group was always defined by division, however, and after thriving for around a decade, interest in the style faded; however, its ideas were carried forward by subsequent generations of artists, and it continues to provide a rich source of creative concepts and technical effects up to the present day.

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Kinetic Art and Artists

1. Alexander Calder 3. Alexander Calder

2. Alexander Calder

4. Alexander Calder

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6. Marcel Duchamp 5. Bob Potts

7. Alexander Calder

7. Marina Apollonio

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Artist: Marcel Duchamp Artwork description & Analysis:

Important Art and Artists of Kinetic Art

Bicycle Wheel is mainly famous as the first example of what Duchamp called his “readymades”: artworks which literally constituted found, generally mass-produced objects, placed in galleries or other suitably suggestive contexts and presented as works of art. In this case, however, the work contains a movable element - the bicycle wheel - and has thus also been seen as the first example of Kinetic art.

Marcel Duchamp is primarily associated with the Dada movement, and Bicycle Wheel is most significant as an expression of that movement’s revolutionary attitudes to the boundaries of the art object, and its scorn for established notions of artistic form and interpretation. What is important about the work in this sense is not its incorporation of motion into sculpture but what it is not: its rejection of the artisanal modes of construction and composition central to what Duchamp derided as “retinal art”. However, for Duchamp, the movement of the bicycle wheel was also essential to the work’s effect. “I enjoyed looking at it,” he said, “just as I enjoyed looking at the flames dancing in a fireplace.

It was like having a fireplace in my studio, the movement of the wheel reminded me of the movement of flames.” The first viewers of Bicycle Wheel were also invited to spin the wheel, and Duchamp went on to make more obviously proto-Kinetic works such as his Rotary Glass Plates (Precision Optics) of 1920, and his Roto-Reliefs of 1935-65.

Although Bicycle Wheel was made outside the context of the Kinetic art movement, artists of the 1950s-60s looked back on it as a precursor, evidence of a tradition of Kinetic art extending across the twentieth century. The importance subsequently assigned to Duchamp’s piece also reveals the significance of Dada as a - sometimes hidden forerunner to Kinetic art. Though in many instances, Kinetic art expressed optimism regarding the relationship between technology and humanity, for some Kinetic artists, the rise of the machine signaled the demise of a vital human spirit, or the absence of any such spirit in the first place.

The somewhat abject appearance of Bicycle Wheel, and the comic pointlessness of its freewheeling motion, predict this more satirical, socially critical aspect of Kinetic art.

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Artist: Naum Gabo Artwork description & Analysis:

Important Art and Artists

Naum Gabo’s Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) consists of a steel rod affixed to a wooden base, set in motion by an electric motor. The oscillations of the rod create the illusion of a static, curvilinear shape, a sculptural form generated entirely through movement, and arguably the first example of Kinetic art created in earnest.

The sculpture was constructed in war-torn, post-Revolutionary Moscow, where Russian artists such as Gabo were attempting to play their part in the construction of a new, Utopian society. As many of the workshops where he might have requisitioned materials were shut, Gabo used an old doorbell mechanism to power the piece. In conceptual terms, the work was meant to demonstrate the new artistic principles outlined in Gabo and his brother Antoine Pevsner’s “Realistic Manifesto” (1920), the first document of modern art to speak of “kinetics” as an aspect of artistic form, announcing that “kinetic rhythms” should be “affirmed ... as the basic forms of our perception of real time”.

More specifically, Kinetic Construction was meant to demonstrate the principle of the “standing wave”: the way that certain waveforms move through space to create the illusion of a permanent, static presence. In both concept and context, then, this piece evokes the technological, politically radical world-view which underpinned the earliest, Constructivist-inspired works of Kinetic art.

Many Kinetic artists of the 1950s-60s revived the technological and utopian fervour of the Constructivist vanguard, making new attempts to integrate technology into art, and to establish a new, rational and scientific creative vocabulary fit for an internationalist culture. Gabo thus created a work which stands at the forefront of one part of the Kinetic art movement; at the same time, it is worth acknowleding that in its relative simplicity of form, Kinetic Construction is, as Gabo put it, more of an “explanation of the idea than a Kinetic sculpture itself”.

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Artist: Laszio Moholy-Nagy Artwork description & Analysis:

Important Art and Artists

The Light-Space Modulator created by Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy between 1922 and 1930 is an early example of the complex, mechanically-powered Kinetic art that would become more common after the Second World War. The original version displayed in 1930 consisted of a large circular base supporting various interlocking, moving components: several metal rectangles designed to jerk around in irregular fashion; perforated metal discs which released a small black ball; and a glass spiral which rotated to create the illusion of a conical form. Central to the piece’s effect were 130 integrated electric light bulbs, which shone through the construction to produce mesmeric interplays of light and shadow on the surrounding surfaces. The work was first shown as part of an exhibition by the Deutscher Werkbund (“German Association of Craftsmen”) in Paris; the same year, Moholy-Nagy created a film based on the sculpture, Light Play Black-White-Grey, and used the word “kinetic” for the first time to describe his own practice.

Born in Hungary to a Jewish family, in 1920 MoholyNagy emigrated to Germany, and by 1923 was teaching at the Bauhaus, then the most significant outpost of Constructivist principles in Northern Europe. MoholyNagy was partly responsible for establishing the technological, rationalist, politically radical approach to art associated with the school; working across a range of applied artforms, he focused on the integration of scientific principles into creative design, and the establishment of new compositional vocabularies for art. The Light-Space Modulator exemplifies these ideas, many of which were expressed in his “Manifesto on the System of Dynamico-Constructivist Forms”, coauthored with Alfred Kemeny in 1922: “[w]e must put in the place of the static principle of classical art the

dynamic principle of universal life. Stated practically: instead of static material construction [...] dynamic construction [...] must be evolved, in which the material is employed as the carrier of its forces.”

Though influenced by Naum Gabo’s kinetic constructions - and sketches for kinetic constructions - of the early 1920s, Light-Space Modulator represents a new level of conceptual and technical sophistication within Kinetic art. In this sense, and in terms of the date and location of its creation, it is an important transitional work, standing between the first pioneering efforts of artists such as Gabo and the ever-more complex mechanical constructions of post-1945 Kinetic artists in Western Europe and North America.

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Artist: Alexander Calder Artwork description & Analysis:

Important Art and Artists

Arc of Petals is one of many examples of the free-standing or hanging “mobiles” - so christened by Marcel Duchamp - for which the American sculptor Alexander Calder became famous. Looking somewhat like an inverted, suspended tree, the piece comprises a central spine of iron wire with various petal or leaf-like appendages budding off from it; these pieces are largest and most solid-seeming at the top, smallest and most tentative-seeming at the base. The movement of the piece in the breeze is intended to play with the readers’ associations of heaviness and lightness, providing a counterintuitive, irregular pattern of motion. With works such as Arc of Petals, Calder defined an important and unique sub-genre of Kinetic aesthetics, one that was concerned with the movement and dynamism of nature rather than of the mechanized, urbanized world.

Calder came from a family of sculptors and painters, and before training as an artist took a degree in mechanical engineering, learning various technical processes which he would later put to use in his Kinetic art. In the late 1920s he moved briefly to Paris, where he befriended many of the prominent modern artists of the day; his construction of mobiles as art-objects commenced at the start of the following decade. Whereas early works in this medium rely on motorized or hand-cranked mechanisms to create pre-determined patterns of movements, by the time Arc of Petals was made, Calder was generally producing mobiles set in motion by passing air currents. Initially he used materials such as glass or pottery to create these pieces, but later works such Arc of Petals were constructed from pieces of hand-shaped

aluminum, painted in solid reds, yellows, blues, blacks, and whites. In this case, we can see the influence of his painter friends Joan Miró and Jean Arp in the biomorphic forms of the leaves, while a single aluminum petal left unpainted reminds the viewer of the weight and roughness of the compositional material.

Constructed with artisanal care and intended to be set in motion by natural forces, Calder’s mobiles express quite a different aspect of Kinetic art to the futuristic, mechanical contraptions of other artists. The element of chance or contingency introduced into the viewer’s encounter with the piece by its interaction with the atmosphere might be described as post-Dada, but there is also a lyrical engagement with nature evident in this effect, and in the graceful organic curves of the piece, while something of the aura of the fine-art object is imbued by Calder’s hand-crafting process. In its interaction with the natural world, Calder’s work predicts post-Kinetic developments such as Light Art.

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Beginnings Kinetic Art

In its focus on capturing the dynamism of its subject-matter, Kinetic Art expresses a foundational concern of modern art in general, and many critics have cited Postimpressionist painters such as Seurat as the first Kinetic artists. But the first examples of modern artworks which literally incorporate movement - or movable elements - date from the 1910s, and were created by artists working in the Dadaist and Constructivist traditions.

Arguably the earliest work of Kinetic art is the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel (1913), which consists of a wheel placed upside down on a stool; this is also recognized as the first “readymade”. In 1920, Constructivist artists Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner used the term “Kinetic art” in their Realistic Manifesto; the same year, Gabo completed his Kinetic Construction, a free-standing metal rod set in motion by an electric motor which articulates a delicate wave-pattern in the air, the first work of modern art primarily concerned with expressing movement.

Ten years later, the Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy used the term “kinetic” again, to describe the mechanized motion of his LightSpace Modulator (1930), while other figures associated with the Bauhaus, and with the post-Constructivist movement of Concrete Art, produced work across the 1930s-40s which might now be called Kinetic art.

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Beginnings Kinetic Art

Accepting these early expressions of the concepts underpinning Kinetic art, it was not established as a coherent movement until 1955, when the group exhibition Le Mouvement was held at the Galerie Denise René in Paris.

Central to this show was the work of Hungarian artist and René Gallery co-founder Victor Vasarely, whose Manifeste Jaune (‘Yellow Manifesto’), published to coincide with the exhibition, became one of Kinetic art’s founding documents. Vasarely had been trained in the traditions of the Bauhaus, and had spent many years working in commercial design before turning to fine art, bringing with him various graphic techniques which would inform his new approach, including the use of grid-like arrangements of black and white to suggest depth or motion. Vasarely’s work quickly attracted followers, most notably Bridget Riley, who would make a comparable range of effects world-famous.

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Key ideas Kinetic Art

In creating paintings, sculptures, and art environments which relied on the presentation of motion for effect, the Kinetic art movement was the first to offer works of art which extended in time as well as space.

This was a revolutionary gesture: not only because it introduced an entirely new dimension into the viewing experience, but because it so effectively expressed the new fascination with the interrelationship of time and space which defined modern intellectual culture since the discoveries of Einstein.

Kinetic artists often presented works of art which relied on mechanized movement, or which otherwise explored the drive towards mechanization and scientific knowledge which characterized modern society. Different artists expressed a different stance on this process, however: those more influenced by Constructivism felt that by embracing the machine, art could integrate itself with everyday life, taking on a newly central role in the Utopian societies of the future; artists more influenced by Dada utilized mechanical processes in an anarchic, satirical spirit, to comment on the potential enslavement of humankind by science, technology, and capitalist production.

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Key ideas Kinetic Art

Many Kinetic artists were interested in analogies between machines and human bodies. Rather than regarding the two entities as radically different - one being soulless and functional, the other governed by intuition and insight - they used their art to imply that humans might be little more than irrational engines of conflicting lusts and urges, like dysfunctional machines. This idea has deep roots in Dada, but is also related to the midcentury concept of cybernetics.

28 Biography

Theodorus Gerardus Jozef “Theo” Jansen, born 14 March 1948, is a Dutch artist. In 1990, he began building large mechanisms out of PVC that are able to move on their own and, collectively, are entitled, Strandbeest.

The kinetic sculptures appear to walk. His animated works are intended to be a fusion of art and engineering. He has said that “The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds.” He strives to equip his creations with their own artificial intelligence so they may avoid obstacles such as the sea, by changing course when detected Jansen was born in Scheveningen in the Netherlands. He grew up with a talent for both physics and art, and studied physics at the University of Delft. Jansen left the university in 1974 without a degree. While at Delft, Jansen was involved in many projects that involved both art and technology, including a paint machine and a flyingsaucer machine.

In 1979 Jansen started using cheap PVC pipes to build a 4-meter-wide flying saucer that was filled with helium. It was launched over Delft in 1980 on a day when the sky was hazy. Light and sound came from the saucer. Because the saucer was black against a light sky, its size was difficult to determine. The police even stated that it was 30-meters-wide and some people swore they saw a halo around it.Jansen has

claimed that this project “caused a nearriot”. He said that afterward, the machine was never found and that it probably landed somewhere in Belgium. He later repeated the project over Paris.

Jansen’s painting machine was developed in 1984–86 in Delft, and it was a somewhat larger project than his flying saucer. It consisted of a tube with a light cell situated at its end. When darkness was detected, the machine would begin to spray paint, creating painted silhouettes of people standing in front of it. This machine also was attached to a large piece of wood that was hoisted against a wall, where it would move back and forth to create 2-D images of everything in the room.

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30 Interview One

‘...maybe I should give them some sort of weapon like poisonous arrows or things with which they could defend themselves, but it turns out that they charm people. And that’s the best weapon you can have.(...)’

31 CT: You’ve got these things that are designed to survive by themselves, typically on a beach.

Do people ever try to injure or destroy them?

Is man a factor with their safety?

TJ: I was afraid of that when I first started this, but it turns out that has never happened in 25 years. It’s a strange phenomenon because I thought in the beginning, maybe I should give them some sort of weapon like poisonous arrows or things with which they could defend themselves, but it turns out that they charm people. And that’s the best weapon you can have.

CT: The proportions by which these things are built are also really important. You’ve previously talked about creating “the new wheel” when it comes to their mobility.

TJ: In 1991, a year after I started this project I invented this leg system which is the way the Strandbeests are walking. So the special thing about the way is they don’t move up and down.

So they stay on the same level while walking – all other animals move up and down, like we do.

And this is because of the proportion of length of tubes which is in the beasts. I wrote a genetic algorithm in the computer to define these 13 lengths of tubes in the leg system and this is effectively the secret of the Strandbeests. You could also see it as their DNA code. They walk on a proportion of numbers.

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Biography

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CT: How would you describe yourself?

As an artist? An engineer?

TJ: For me, it’s not really important. I see me just as a human being. And I’m so surprised that I exist I wouldn’t call myself something.

I mean, of course, people want to call you something. If you’re in a museum, then people call you an artist and I don’t like being called an artist actually. In fact, I like to show my work in an arts environment because then it turns out that people seem to put more imagination in the way they’re looking at it.

CT: You talk about the beasts as animals, as having brain, a nose, a stomach and about their being able to survive. How do you feel toward them?

TJ: People think I have the feeling like you feel to other persons, like you feel to your dog or your children. And no, I see it as a totally different specimen than we are, so I don’t feel love to them. Of course, I love them but in a totally different way than I think of other persons. It’s not the personal kind of love, it’s the love for mathematics or love for mechanics.

CT: You were born and raised in Scheveningen, a small coastal city in the Netherlands. Was your childhood full of creating things like this?

TJ: I’m the youngest of 11 children and I was born almost on that beach, so the beach is a big part of my brain. I think I was a normal kid, not really special, no. I don’t think people

‘I like to show my work in an arts environment because then it turns out that people seem to put more imagination in the way they’re looking at it. ‘

35 thought I was special. I think it came later when I was about 24, then I became a painter. And I was studying physics before that. And then the creative process really started.

CT: In “Theo Jansen,” a short documentary about you and your work, you talk about waking up and then working on ideas that don’t often succeed, but still finding a way to move forward through new ideas. Tell me about that creative process.

TJ: I restrict myself to this material, these yellow tubes which we use in Holland for cables in houses, so it’s everywhere on the streets, it’s very cheap. And I restrict myself to this material just like you could see the real creator restricted himself to just protein to make us.

So I try to restrict myself to these tubes, but that also means that you cannot realize all your ideas because of these restrictions. The tubes, they push me. My plans don’t succeed and then the tubes come up with their own ideas, you might say. The process is very unpredictable and the road is very capricious, so you can never know where you’re going. So I think it’s a real evolutionary process. It’s not like intelligent design where there’s the hand of god that leads the material, no. I’m not god, I’m more a slave of these tubes. I have to obey them – they dictate to me what to do.

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Biography

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Marcus Fairs: Tell us who you are and what you're doing here on Miami Beach.

Theo Jansen: Well, I'm Theo Jansen and I'm a kinetic sculptor. And I’m showing my work for the first time in a group of, sort of, animals.

I try to make new forms of life which live on beaches. And they don't have to eat because they get their energy from the wind. And during the 24 years that I've been working on these beasts, there has been a sort of evolution. They have become better and better at surviving storms on the beach. I hope to spend the next 20 years evolving these animals and making them better. When I leave this planet, these animals will be a new species on Earth.

Marcus Fairs: Tell us the story of how you first came up with the idea of building Strandbeests.

Theo Jansen: I used to be a writer. I wrote columns in a newspaper, in the science section. It was a strange look at the world. And in one column I raised the idea that there could be skeletons on the beach, which were driven by the wind, and they would gather sand to build up the dunes. So this was in fact a way to save Holland from drowning in the North Sea, which is rising.

So after publishing this column, I didn't do anything for a long time. Then came this day that I passed the tool shop where they sell this kind of [plastic] tube – because we use these kinds of tubes in Holland as ducts for cables in houses. So I bought some of these tubes, and after that I played for an afternoon with these tubes. And by the end of that afternoon I decided to spend one year on the tubes. And I also had the illusion that I would be finished after a year. Of course that was not true. It

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was maybe a naive view of the world because I'm still attracted to the tubes and still busy realising this plan.

Marcus Fairs: And now you build Strandbeests full time?

Theo Jansen: Yes. Marcus Fairs: How would you describe your relationship with the beests? Are you their inventor, creator or curator?

Theo Jansen: Well, you could say that the beests and I are living in symbiosis because the beests cannot do without me, and I cannot do without the beests anymore. So there is a sort of cooperation where we both get benefits from each other.

Marcus Fairs: Do the beests still exist to push sand onto the dunes, or have they become something else?

Theo Jansen: I have forgotten about that because during the process I got so much more interested in the history of evolution that I forgot all about saving the country because this dream, at that moment, was more important for me.

Marcus Fairs: You talk about evolution. Are they evolving towards some kind of particular purpose? Or is the purpose of it just so that they can survive?

Theo Jansen: Surviving is the purpose. All living things are living for reproduction. What we find in nature is something which will reproduce itself. These animals, they found a way – in fact a very clever way – to reproduce.

And they did that behind my back.

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Marcus Fairs: How do they do that?

Theo Jansen: In the middle the beests have this sort of spine. The spine makes a circular movement, and that circular movement is transformed by a number of tubes to a walking movement by the shoe which is under there. And this particular movement is to do with the proportion of the lengths of the tubes which are in-between the spine and the shoe. The proportions are based on thirteen numbers. And this particular proportion takes care that the animal stays on the same level while walking.

And that's the special thing of Strandbeests, because normal animals always toss up and down as they walk, but the Strandbeests stay on the same level. You could see this proportion of thirteen numbers as the DNA code of the Strandbeests.

I published this DNA code on my website.

Since then, thousands of students around the world are building Strandbeests. And all these students, they think they're having a good time. They think they're happy. But in fact they're being used for Strandbeest reproduction! So the Strandbeests abuse students for their reproduction.

And there's a new kind of Strandbeest that doesn’t survive on beaches. They have found a protection against wind. They can survive in student rooms and bookshelves.

This is in fact a better environment than on the beach. Now in all corners of the world you see appearing these small beests, and this Strandbeest reproduction went into an acceleration a few years ago. Two guys came to my studio, and they put something

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on my table: a walking Strandbeest. And this Strandbeest turned out not to be assembled but to be born. It was born in a 3D printer. Nowadays you have special 3D printers which can make moving parts and moving things which you don't have to assemble. They come born in one piece. You can imagine what happened next. You can put a series of 0s and 1s on the internet – the DNA code – and everywhere around the world you can print out these beests.

And that's what's happening now, which is totally out of control. And there are now imitations on the internet which run better than my DNA code. So there's a real evolution going on which you cannot stop any more. And we all think that we are doing it but, in fact, the Strandbeests hypnotise people to do this.

Marcus Fairs: It's like cats. Cats were wild animals that became domesticated.

Today we think of a cat as a pet but actually the cat has other ideas.

Theo Jansen: The cat behaves in a way that we like and that's why we breed them and we feed them. It's the same kind of evolution.

Marcus Fairs: And this DNA code, this mechanism, did you invent that or did it already exist?

Theo Jansen: I invented it. In 1990 I wrote a genetic algorithm on a computer to define these certain lengths. And this is the big secret. The way of walking was done on that computer.

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Marcus Fairs: So it wasn't trial and error? You didn't do thousands and thousands of iterations?

Theo Jansen: Well yes, because the mathematics of the first leg I made was very complicated. It had two cranks at ninety degrees connected in a certain way to two limbs, which went up and down. That was the first limb. Then I had a third limb to lift up and put down on the ground to give forward movement. This first beest could only move its legs when it was lying on its back. It just couldn't stand on its feet. But I learned a lot from that.

Then one night in 1991 I couldn't sleep, so I brought the crankshaft closer to the leg and made it a lot simpler. That same night I realised I had to write a new algorithm in the computer to define the lengths of the tubes.

Marcus Fairs: Do you know about the Mine Kafon? It’s a concept for a wind-blown device to clear land mines.

Theo Jansen: Oh yeah! I know it, yeah! By Massoud Hassani?

Marcus Fairs: It's to destroy mines in Afghanistan.

Theo Jansen: That's Massoud, yeah.

I know him. He's been several times to my studio.

Marcus Fairs: And what do you think of that project? It has been quite controversial.

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Theo Jansen: Well, of course, this is a very good idea, but I think practically he has a lot of problems, yeah. I wonder if it's really going to be effective. Because he thinks that it's a low investment but you have to have very many to have an effect, I think. Of course, I'm an amateur because I don't have any experience in Afghanistan minefields.

Marcus Fairs: Maybe your beests could do the job better?

Theo Jansen: No, no. In fact because my beests only like very flat surfaces. That's why they only survive on the wet part of the beach – or they could live on ice lakes.

But they don't like uneven surfaces. They are not good for Mars, no!

Marcus Fairs: Do you have any plans to develop beests to live in different habitats, or serve some kind of useful function such as clearing landmines? Or are you happy with this species you've created?

Theo Jansen: Well, I have to be happy with what is happening now because this already cost me also so much time and effort. If I want to develop the Desert Beest or the Bush Beest or whatever then I'd need a few more lives to do all this! I have only twenty years left, so I'm very much in a hurry to create the autonomous beach animal that's designed for the beach where I was born, and where I'm probably going to die as well. And that particular beast will have to survive over there.

Marcus Fairs: What's the name of that beach?

Theo Jansen: It's called Theo Jansen Beach. You can find it on Google Maps.

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Animaris Adulari

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Theo Jansen’s wind-powered sculpture.

The March of the Strandbeests

If you’re like many people, you know about Theo Jansen already. You may not know you know, but on reflection perhaps you realize you do.

You’ve come across his kinetic sculptures in videos online, or a kid has shown the videos to you, or you’ve been with friends who were watching them. Once seen, they are remembered. Theo Jansen is a Dutch artist who lives in Delft, near the North Sea. He could almost be a single-name artist, because everybody calls him Theo, pronounced “Tayo.” For the past twenty-one years, Theo has devoted himself to constructing animals that can walk on the beach powered only by the wind.

Ian FrazierSeptember 5, 2011 Issue

His name for his animals is Strandbeests, which means “beach animals” in Dutch. The first time I saw them, I was in a restaurant in Manhattan having lunch with friends and somebody brought out a laptop and we watched and re-watched them. The creatures were many-legged, they seemed as at home on a beach as sandpipers or crabs, they high-stepped with the vivacity of colts, they fit perfectly next to the waves and sky. Some had batwing-like sails, one was made of plywood, but basically they were accumulations of stiff plastic tubes. To see inanimate stuff come to life that way was wild, shiver-inducing—like seeing a haystack do the Macarena.

At this lunch, people said how great it would be if the Strandbeests came to New York. And they might, because Robert Kloos, the director for Visual Arts, Architecture, and Design at the Consulate General of the Netherlands, has been working with other fans of Theo’s to find a venue and funding for a show in the city in 2013, and has described such a show as “a dream come true.” The photographer Lena Herzog, one of Theo’s fans, who was at the lunch, said the show would draw a big audience, because a commercial for BMW cars featuring Theo and his Strandbeests had already received more than four million hits on YouTube. Then she told me that Theo would be bringing out some new Strandbeests for a trial run, or walk, on a beach near Delft very soon, that she would be going over to photograph them, and that I should come along.

57 I thought this was a good idea. Before the Strandbeests appeared here, I would see them in their native environment.

So in mid-May I went, and Theo himself met me at the airport in Amsterdam, holding a hand-lettered sign with my name on it at the customs exit. (Lena would be joining us in a day or two.) He greeted me warmly and we wandered off. At first, he couldn’t find his white Volvo in the airport parking garage, and I set down my suitcase while he listened for his dog. Theo has a small, wool-colored dog of a French Madagascar breed who goes almost everywhere with him and is named Murphy.

In a minute, he picked up Murphy’s bark and we homed in on it. The dog barked more encouragingly the closer we got to the car.

A drive of about forty minutes brought us to Theo’s outdoor workshop, on a man-made hill in the suburb of Ypenburg, near Delft. The hill is on land that used to be a military airport, and serves as a sound barrier between a highway on one side and apartment houses on the other. A sort of no man’s zone, it remains mostly unoccupied, so local officials let Theo use it to assemble and store his Strandbeests.

The yellow PVC tubing the animals are made of bleaches to bone white in the sun; wrecks of defunct Strandbeests lay in the hilltop grass like heaps of old bones. A few newer, ready-totravel models stood in a line next to the storage container where Theo keeps thirty miles of plastic tubes for future use.

Others of his more recent animals were absent, returning from an exhibition in Japan.

Theo is sixty-three. His collar-length white hair frames his head like two S shapes facing each

other, his eyes are china blue, and he has a wide, guileless smile. That he is handsome contributes to the success of his videos. When he is working, and at other times, he wears a well-tailored purple corduroy jacket narrow at the waist and flared below. His jacket, unrestrained hair, long legs, and antic energy often give him the look of a storybook sorcerer. He is somewhat deaf—the result, he says, of spending so much of his forties hanging next to the loud engines of the para-planes he loved to fly in many places, but mainly over the North Sea coastline. His country’s famous landscape, intensely cultivated and flat as water, floors a vast column of cloud-filled sky, and the image of a younger Theo careening around up there in his sketchy flying machines somehow still is part of him.

In fact, Theo’s first important work was a sky piece. In 1980, he made a flying saucer from plastic sheeting on a light frame. The saucer was lens-shaped, about fifteen feet across, and carried beneath it a plastic paint bucket that emitted outer-space-like beeps. One afternoon, he and some friends filled the flying saucer with helium and launched it over Delft.

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Immediately, a local sensation resembling the “War of the Worlds” episode (if less frantic and more civilized) ensued.

The object he had made looked and behaved as a flying saucer is expected to. It hovered, rose, darted (with the wind), went in and out of clouds. The police gave chase, people ran from their houses to look up, authorities reported that the object was moving at great speeds, it was said to be as big as a nuclear reactor, etc.—all satisfying developments, from Theo’s point of view. After exciting the population and inscribing in thousands of memories its flight through the spacious skies of Delft, the saucer vanished in the direction of Belgium. When the author of the event was revealed, he got a lot of press. The experience ruined him, he says, for the landscape paintings he had been doing before.

I was thinking it must be strange for a landscape painter to live in a landscape that was fixed in oil and ratified permanently by the great Dutch painters of the seventeenth century. From Theo’s man-made hilltop, for example, I could see several familiar-looking towers, including the fifteenth-century church steeple that appears in Vermeer’s “View of Delft” (1660). I could also see a small flock of storks flapping to the horizon, and a canal lined with possibly invasive reeds, and blunt-faced trucks on the highway, and red rooftops, and rows of thin, dark trees like sawteeth. The only other structure as tall as the old steeple or the towers was the two poles holding up the golden arches of a McDonald’s restaurant. With binoculars, I might have picked out the crows and ravens that throng around the sign and descend on the garbage cans in the McDonald’s parking lot. My hotel was near the McDonald’s, it turned out, and I observed the birds close up later.

Theo showed me around his small on-site workshop. It was filled with tools like vises, saws, clamps, and heat guns for softening the plastic tubes. On perforated wallboards, tools hung neatly inside their black magic-marker outlines. From a workbench Theo picked up a piece of three-quarter-inch PVC tube about two feet long. He said this was the basic element in the Strandbeests’ construction, like protein in living things.

“I have known about these tubes all my life,” he told me. (He speaks good English.) “Building codes in Holland require that electrical wiring in buildings go through conduit tubes like

61 these. There are millions of miles of these tubes in Holland. You see they are a cheese yellow when they are new—a good color for Holland. The tubes’ brand name used to be Polyvolt, now it is Pipelife. When we were little, we used to do this with them.”

He took a student notebook, tore out a sheet of graph paper, rolled it into a tight cone, wet the point of the cone with his tongue, tore off the base of the cone so it fit snugly into the tube, raised the tube to his lips, blew, and sent the paper dart smack into the wall, fifteen feet away. He is the unusual kind of adult who can do something he used to do when he was nine and not have it seem at all out of place. “I believe it is now illegal for children in Dutch schools to have these tubes,” he said.

Theo grew up in Scheveningen, a small port city just north of Delft. His father, a farmer, moved the family there after losing his farm during the Second World War. In Scheveningen, the family supported itself mainly by taking in German tourists who wanted to vacation at the beach, just across the street from the Jansens’ apartment. Theo remembers his mother waking him and his six brothers and four sisters early in the morning during the summers so they could deflate the air mattresses they had slept on and get them out of the living room before the guests occupying the family’s beds woke up. He went to primary and secondary schools in Scheveningen, studied physics at the Delft University of Technology, and left in 1974 without a degree.

After university, he became an artist and did other things, like work in a medical laboratory. His landscape paintings, which he spiced up by putting in women wearing only underwear, had some success—“They were vulgar paintings, but they sold”—and after the flyingsaucer episode ended them he invented a light-sensitive automatic painting gun that he demonstrated at local fairs.

The Delft city government gave him a subsidized studio in a downtown building converted for artists, which he still uses. In it he built a large pair of feathered wings and propelled himself through the air by means of them while suspended on cables. He had several shows of his work in Dutch museums and galleries, marking one opening with the launch of a twenty-foot-long rocket he’d made.

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In 1990, in a column he was then writing for De Volkskrant, a national newspaper, he warned that rising sea levels might re-flood Holland and reduce its size to what it had been in medieval times. As a solution, he proposed to build animals that would toss sand in the air so that it would land on and augment the seaside dunes. What he envisioned were selfpropelled creatures that would restore the balance between water and land, the way beavers do in Dutch marshes. He promised to devote a year to the project, and it has occupied him exclusively ever since. While fooling around with plastic conduit tubes at a building-supply store, he realized that they were the perfect raw material. More even than the Strandbeests, the possibilities he saw for the tubes changed his life, he saysHe divides his different generations of Strandbeests into time periods like geologic eras. In the earliest period, he was taping the tubes together. He calls this the Gluton Period (1990-91). The first tube-and-tape creation, Animaris Vulgaris, could not stand up, only lie on its back and move its legs. In the next period, the Chorda Epoch (1991-93), he began to connect the tubes with nylon zip strips, a great improvement on tape, and he built Animaris Currens Vulgaris, the first animal that could stand and walk. To figure out the best way to make the legs, he ran a genetic

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65 algorithm for leg design on his computer, and it suggested a foot that pivoted at the ankle and a double-jointed leg that allowed the foot to stay on the ground as long as possible before lifting for the next step. Basic Strandbeest design now uses multiple pairs of these legs set on a central crankshaft, which produces a galloping-herd effect.

Later refinements added sails, a shovel arm for tossing up sand, pneumatic power with fanlike blades pumping air into plastic bottles for pressurized storage, “nerve cells,” which can detect when the animal is in shallow water, and directional cells, which count steps and cause the animal to back up when it is about to go into the sea. As of now, none of these technologies work very reliably. Theo says he envies the original Creator’s supply of countless millions of years for animal evolution, and is sure he could make perfect beach animals, given that much time. “The walking Strandbeest is a body snatcher,” he told me, while disassembling one for transport.

“It charms people and then uses them so they can’t do anything else but follow, and I am the worst victim, you could say. All the time I think about them. Always I have a new plan, but then it is corrected by the requirements of the tubes. They dictate to me what to do. At the end of my working day, I am almost always depressed. Mine is not a straight path like an engineer’s, it’s not A to B. I make a very curly road just by the restrictions of goals and materials. A real engineer would probably solve the problem differently, maybe make an aluminum robot with motor and electric sensors and all that. But the solutions of engineers are often much alike, because human brains are much alike. Everything we think can in principle be thought by someone else. The real ideas, as evolution shows, come about by chance. Reality is very creative. Maybe that is why the Strandbeests appear to be alive, and charm us. The Strandbeests themselves have let me make them.”

66 The March of the Strandbeests

Theo’s beach headquarters is a thatch-roofed cabaret-restaurant called De Fuut (the Grebe). Its owner, Leo Van Der Vegt, likes to have him and his Strandbeests on the sand beside his restaurant’s outdoor dining area, and sometimes he picks up the tab for Theo and his entourage. The Scheveningen beach is huge. From the dunes to the water it’s at least a football field, and maybe half again as far at low tide. In one direction, the beach stretches more than a mile to the piers of Scheveningen harbor, where a monumental wind turbine rotates counterclockwise against the sky. In the other direction, the beach dwindles out of sight to the faint silhouetted cargo cranes of Rotterdam. Along the middle of the sand, parallel to the shore, runs a row of metal-and-plastic trash barrels set in concrete foundations.

Toward Rotterdam, these barrels extend onward until the row becomes a dotted line. As a visual reference, they are modernist and daunting, and I’ve noticed that photographers and filmmakers who record the Strandbeests’ ramblings try to keep them out of the frame.

On a Saturday morning, Theo loaded several Strandbeests on a rented flatbed trailer and the roof of his Volvo and drove to beach ramp No. 10 with the wind whistling in the tubes. His friends Hans and Loek came along to help. Hans teaches language skills to vocational students and Loek takes photographs, teaches high-school and university students about the Strandbeests, and sometimes works as Theo’s assistant (paid). At the beach, four admirers of Theo’s who are in the master’s program at the Delft University of Technology were waiting for him: Esra, a young woman from Istanbul; Baver, a young man from Ankara; Marta, from Portugal; and Miguel, from Monterrey, Mexico.

All spoke English, the language in which classes in the D.U.T. master’s program are taught. With Theo and his friends, they unloaded the Strandbeests and carried or frog-marched them half a mile from the ramp to the restaurant.

A strong onshore breeze was blowing, causing flags to point inland.

Waves broke and foamed. Dark shadows of incoming clouds sped over the white sand and carried the dunes in a blink, like the waves’ secret intentions. Windblown sand was whipping along at ankle level

67 and leaving little drifts behind pebbles. The few other people on the beach appeared tiny in the immensity, except for the para-surfers, whose scoop-shaped chutes bucked and pirouetted and lifted the riders sometimes twenty feet above the waves.

Theo was toting a long-handled wooden mallet of the sort usually associated with circus tents. Employing roundhouse overhead blows, he pounded metal stakes into the sand and tethered Strandbeests to them. One of the animals was a worm that isn’t wind-powered but writhes violently when infused with compressed air; he left it unstaked. A large Strandbeest seemed about to blow over rather than walk away, and he adjusted its tether to hold it up. Another, Animaris Longus, was light and limber enough so that it appeared on the verge of trotting off at any moment on the breeze. Theo laid this one on its side and staked it down. He then went among the Strandbeests, tinkering while the blown sand hissed against them and the wind made them creak and strain. Murphy, his dog, followed him and watched everything he did.

Beach trials the next morning were called off owing to rain, so I took a train to Amsterdam and visited the Rijksmuseum. Most of the museum is closed for renovations, and its most in-demand paintings have been concentrated in just thirteen rooms—sort of a Rijksmuseum’s Greatest Hits. I got there at opening time and for twenty minutes or so it wasn’t crowded.

Such a mass of visual sublimity all in one place tramples the viewer like the legs of a thousand Strandbeests, but I did have one thought, despite my dizziness, as I paused in a nook of seventeenth-century landscapes.

I had never been to Holland before, but the minute

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I arrived I felt as if I had been. I was comfortable in it. The reason, I now saw, was that I had previously habituated myself to the place during long contemplations of Dutch landscapes in American museums. I was like those first-time visitors to New York or Los Angeles who immediately know their way around from having seen the cities so much in movies and on TV. Soon, the visual trampling administered by the Rijksmuseum’s greatest art was matched by a literal trampling from fierce tour groups speaking every language, and I caromed into Gallery No. 12, a dark room featuring the Rembrandt masterpiece “The Night Watch.” Packed multitudes stood there in the dark letting the gigantic and glorious and well-lit painting blast them. Just off that room was a smaller one, not part of the Greatest Hits, with an unassuming show of landscape sketches on paper.

People were passing through it without stopping. I ducked in and took a breath. The show, “Dunes: Holland’s Wilderness,” was about the shore where I’d just been. The introductory label said, “Holland’s landscape is man-made. Only the sands and the dunes along the coast are more or less nature’s creation.

They are our natural defense against the sea. . . The earliest known drawings of Holland’s landscape are views of the dunes near Haarlem recorded by Hendrick Goltzius around 1600. Many landscape specialists followed in his footsteps. . . . Their work shows the wide, endless space, the quiet and the wildness.”

All the drawings were sketchbook size, done in pencil, ink, or black chalk. If the giant Rembrandt in the adjoining room was jet-engine powerful, his little horizontal sketch here, of a shore landscape, was moving for its simplicity and self-effacement.

Some of the dune sketches showed the blades of windmills against the sky; the main purpose of Dutch windmills wasn’t so much to mill anything as to pump the incoming sea back out. A Jacob van Ruisdael sketch with a heavy shading of cloud in one corner showed more clearly the same quality of torque that his paintings often have. In a vitrine, a leather-

71 bound sketchbook of Gerard ter Borch the younger lay open to a black-chalk drawing of a tangled patch of brush on a hillside. Such a no-count, lovely piece of ground! The drawing dated from 1634, though it could have been done in the Scheveningen dunes, or maybe West Texas, just last week.

The weather did not let up, but Theo went ahead with beach trials the following afternoon anyway. Lena Herzog had arrived from New York, and Alexander Schlichter, a German documentary filmmaker who has been making a film about Theo for ten years, had driven up from Hannover. The four D.U.T. students were there, and Theo’s twentyyear-old son, Zach, and his seventeen-year-old daughter, Divera, and Loek, Theo’s sometime assistant. Beach passersby and restaurant patrons and their dogs came to watch and stood around and moved on. Almost everybody took photographs. Lena Herzog stood on a stepladder, and crawled under the Strandbeests, and lay on her back on the wet sand for her shots. Alexander Schlichter erected a tripod for his camera, and then, since I was doing apparently nothing, asked if I would be his soundman. Taken by surprise, I gave a polite and complicated answer that was not “Yes.” Theo was devoting all his energy to getting a Strandbeest he called Animaris Gubernare up and moving. This colossus had fan-bladedriven air pumps, ninety-six plastic 1.5-litre bottles to store the compressed air, and a stegosaurus-like nose. Sand had drifted over its many feet and become soggy with the rain. Blown sand had got into its joints. Theo prodded it, repaired some broken tubes, fooled with the blades, sprayed the joints with lubricant, coaxed. His hair was flying. His fingernails had become chipped and there was a scrape on his forehead. Really, all that gets the Strandbeests moving is the enthusiasm of this one guy, and he was in the middle of an agon. He said to Alexander Schlichter, “If we can get even eleven seconds of videotape today we’ll be doing great.”

But that was not happening. Theo had us all assemble on the sides of

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the monster Strandbeest to lift it out of the soft, soggy sand and take it farther down the beach to where the sand was smooth and hard.

When we lifted it, it felt inert, like a heap of wet sand itself. We carried it, its legs walked stumblingly and unwillingly, we set it down, we carried it again. Two feet burrowed toe first into the sand and stuck, causing shafts on the corresponding legs to break. Theo told us to carry it back to where we had begun and the disabled legs trailed brokenly.

Theo often says he does not know if he is a sculptor or an engineer or what. His Strandbeests have been in exhibitions all over the world—Munich, London, Taipei, Madrid, Tokyo, Seoul—and he does not care whether they are in art museums or science centers; they have appeared in both. My theory about Theo is that he is secretly a landscape artist. His flying saucer was a landscape piece that for a few minutes brought the classical Delft sky up to date. His Strandbeests, magnets for filming and photography, are really decoys to get us to notice the dunes, sea, and sky. The endless painful artifice involved in the Strandbeests’ construction is his version of the great painters’ technical skill. They painted windmills, he builds wild new kinds of windmills for the most acute observers to photograph.

Artists produced more landscape paintings in the northern Netherlands in the seventeenth century than in any other time or place in the world, probably. Why? I think the reason goes back to Holland’s landscape being man-made. The Dutch made it and they liked to look at it. They had a good workman’s justifiable pride; the landscape paintings were like the “after” pictures of a successful home-improvement project.

Anyone who has stood back and admired a lawn he has just raked knows the feeling. Theo’s Strandbeests, whose long-range purpose is to restore Holland’s dunes, attempt to compress centuries of Dutch experience; ideally, he would remake the landscape and record it all in one career. And since the Dutch think constantly about their always challenged lowland, he falls in line with some deep historic impulses.

Chances are, after all, that soon the seas really will rise. Theo’s ambition is civic-minded and admirably high—to create something beautiful and save his country. Beyond that, he gets the rest of us thinking about the actual world, and what it’s going to be like, and how humans will actually live in it.

75 Torque: the beach at Scheveningen seemed to be ruled by it. Everything was turning, inward-spiralling. The northeast wind skimmed the waves along the beach like pinwheel blades, the giant wind turbine above the harbor rotated, the para-surfers’ chutes twisted this way and that, the ropes on the masts of the catamarans in drydock beside the dunes snaked back and forth and banged their metal parts on the hollow aluminum with a racket that could frighten off wicked spirits. In shoreline indentations, heaps of sea foam accumulated and shivered, and clumps of foam kept blowing free and spinning across the sand, assuming corkscrew shapes and in the next instant abrading themselves away. The speed of their transition from material object to nothing happened so fast it made me queasy.

Theo worked on, fixing, altering, ducking in and out of the huge Strandbeest, searching for replacement parts in plastic storage crates he had brought. On an outdoor table, the owner of the restaurant set out glass mugs of tea with fresh mint leaves. In between taking photos and standing around and occasionally pitching in to help, all of us supernumeraries had plenty of chance for conversation. Lena told me again how much she admires Theo, and how he reminds her of her father, a Russian geophysicist who lives in Yekaterinburg and who has invented a revolutionary new method of petroleum exploration, which, she says, the international oil companies have resisted. Miguel, the D.U.T. student from Mexico, said he loved living in Holland but worried a lot about the violence in Monterrey, where many of his friends and relatives are. Baver, the young man from Ankara, said that Holland’s public transportation was vastly better than Turkey’s.

Alexander, the filmmaker, described a documentary he was working on that concerned the creation of artificial life-forms, such as a fish that contains plant DNA and can feed itself by floating in the sun and photosynthesizing.

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Esra and Marta, the students from Istanbul and Portugal (respectively), said they were working together on a research project about Theo and the importance of the suspension of disbelief to the creative process. Like most other kids who know about Theo, they had first encountered him in videos (many of them made by Alexander) on the Internet. In their rapt regard for him, there appeared no disbelief, suspended or otherwise. For a moment, Theo took a break and joined the onlookers. He was frustrated, vexed, abstracted with technical snafus, and unhappy that some of us had to leave soon and would not get to see Animaris Gubernare lumber off into the sunset (as it did successfully the following day). Then he smiled his sparkling, camera-ready smile. He was having a wonderful time.

Theo went back to work, and the rest of us continued standing around. Earlier in the day, he had taken the smaller Strandbeest, Animaris Longus, and moved it onto the smooth sand, maybe just to get it out of the way. It was a simple, elegant construction of triangular elements in a pyramidal shape supported by two groups of six legs on a central crankshaft. Animaris Longus had no sails, but was light enough so that a wind could move it without them. From a distance, it looked like one of those folding pole-andclothesline contraptions you hang laundry on.

This Strandbeest stood there for a while, unnoticed. The shiny, wet sand held its reflection. Some new customers arrived and sat at one of the restaurant’s outdoor tables. A minute later, a stronger gust came up, and the apparent clothes-drying rack suddenly went tiptoeing across the sand. The people at the table did a triple take and began pointing and laughing, and talking in Dutch. “Dat ding is aan het lopen! ” (“That thing is walking!”) they cried.

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Strandbeest Comparative advantages over wheel based mine escavation system

Analysis of Theo Jansen Mechanism

I decided to implement linkage based locomotive systems on standard load carrying tippers and trucks as a replacement for the conventional tyres. The first mechanism which I came across for such purpose was Klann mechanism which actually mimics the motion of the biological organism (crab). On observing further in detail I found that there were lot of drawbacks with the Klann mechanism, the drawbacks being jerky motion and difficulty in the turning of the vehicle. The next step to be taken was to find a better mechanism which had a smooth walking pattern on any given terrain and could easily function as per requirements. The most flexible mechanism which I settled with is THEO-JANSEN MECHANISM (STRANDBEEST). My final contribution would be to do compressive load analysis to determine the load carrying capacity of the system and compare it with that of a standard wheel based truck or tipper. Finally, all vehicles must be controlled - by a human or other means. Therefore it is necessary to investigate methods of controlling such vehicles.

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1. General

It is well known that animals can travel over roughterrain at speeds much greater than those possible withwheeled or tracked vehicles. Even a human being, by “gettingdown on all fours� if necessary, can travel or climb overterrain which is impossible for a wheeled or tracked vehicle. Nature, apparently, has no use for the wheel. It is thereforeof considerable interest to learn what machines for landlocomotion can do if they are designed to imitate nature.

With this idea in mind I started studying linkages and the comparative function of a set of linkages with certain degrees of freedom arrested. It turned out numerous implementations could be done so as to bring forth set of linkages so designed as to perform locomotion.

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2. General

Analysis of Theo Jansen Mechanism

Since the time of industrial revolution mining has been a crucial and financial base of any running industry. With growing need of manufactured products the requirement of raw material has escalated exponentially.

Engineers have always tried to improvise and improve the utility of vehicles which help in transport of raw materials from the mining site to the industrial transportation unit.

With growing technology many improvements have been made in such vehicles (trucks, tippers, etc). Some of those improvements include: Conversion of tipper units from a single wheel drive (front/rear) to an all wheel drive system.

Improvement of the suspension system.

Implementation of differential in vehicles to prevent skidding.

Development of advanced and heavy duty tyres. All these improvements did help improve transportation of raw materials and also increased the rate of transfer. With improvement and implementation of new technology the cost expenditure also increased and industries have had to setup roads (haul roads) for smoother movement of these wheel based vehicles.

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Walking Mechanism

Klann Mechanism

As mentioned above nature has always chosen legs as the best mode of locomotion so using linkages we tried to mimic nature and come up with certain walking mechanism which will suite all terrain. After reviewing certain mechanisms we came across two of them which proved to be more efficient.

The Klann linkage was developed by Joe Klann in 1994.This mechanism is a planar mechanism designed in such a way that it mimics the walking of a crab and acts as a replacement for modern day wheels.

The linkage consists of a fixed frame, a crank and 2 rockers all connected using pivot joints. The linkage provides many benefits over standard locomotive vehicles.Below is the pictorial representation of the Klannmechanism.

Using eleven small rods, Dutch kinetic sculptor Theo Jansen has created a planar mechanism that, when used in tandem with many others identical to it, can walk in a smooth forward motion. The resulting device has a very organic look, much like a creeping animal. His “beasts” have been made to be wind powered, using a combination of wind sails and empty plastic bottles that can be pumped up to high pressures. Using inspiration from Jansen’s“Strandbeest”kinetic sculptures, this project aims to create an alternate for tyres which can be used for rough terrains.

134 Analysis of Theo Jansen Mechanism

Literature Survey

After researching about mining and excavation industries I came across with these data. The statistics suggests that about 50% of mining cost is spent on roadway and rail transports in the vicinity of the mines (haul roads & side rails). Haul roads cause a great damage to tyres of transporting vehicle requiring frequent and regular replacement.Maintenance cost of haul roads is also high and it needs a separate wing.Weight distribution is uneven in haul roads causing higher stress problems in transport vehicles.

On a rough terrain legs have advantage over tyres so I came on Klann Mechanism. After researching through this mechanism on internet and going though few reports and watching its motion in the YouTube videosI found that Klann Mechanism has its own demerits which include steering and stability.

After crossing out the Klann Mechanism from the list I stumbled on Theo Jansen Mechanism. This mechanism gave me the smoothest motion and is able to carry loads without much high forces applied to it.

With the inspiration from Jansen’s walking mechanisms, I began searching for various applications of the Jansen leg mechanism.

I found several images and videos on the Internet showing different applications of this design large and small that helped me identify what I wanted my design to look like.

The appropriation of the Jansen mechanism has ranged from tiny motorized robots to large multi-legged two-seater vehicles. This mechanism is very simple to build and it requires very less energy to run itself. But the only drawback found about this mechanism is its speed. How fast can it run? Except for that one point the Jansen design is incomparable with any other leg mechanism with such simplicity.

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system design

As mentioned earlier we intend to design a replacement for tyres in load carrying trucks in mineral excavation belts which face a lot of wear and tear due to poor haul road construction. To make the design possible I needed reference data. Using the information power of the internet I came across a report journal on “Finite Element Stress analysis of a solid tyre�. This issue belongs to (Journal of achievements in material and manufacturing engineering-Volume 31 Issue 2 December 2008). The report involves the standard Finite element analysis of a solid tyre and deflections produced in it on application of load. The detail related to the analysis is given further in the report. With reference to the Journal report I decided the dimensions of our setup.

The easy aspect of Theo-Jansen Mechanism (STRANDBEEST) is that it has been provided with a specific set of dimensions which can be scaled to any level, bet it on a small scale as in toys or an industrial scale, i.e. My idea.

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Analysis of Theo Jansen Mechanism

As we show above, these dimension sets are standard and can be used as a scaling reference. During the course of the research it was also found during rough designing that irrespective of the length of the linkages involved the system worked perfectly and the only drawback faced was low stride height.

Before proceeding further I need to explain about the stride pattern in walking mechanisms. Every linkage based walking mechanism either autonomous or manually operated follows a certain pattern while moving. These patterns can be represented as imaginary geometric figures which can be further studied to improve the walking and make it smoother. The more edgy the stride pattern the more jerky the motion of the mechanism. A lot of online reports have been prepared where students from different universities have come up with ideas to replace wheels in cycles and also mechanism for bearing heavy loads and can be moved smoothly. With reference to these projects I referred to the stride pattern of the Jansen mechanism.

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With these references for help I started to develop a design for the system considering dimension in comparison to the tyre analysis report. Initially I came up with a rough line diagram of the design as seen from the right side view and depicted its motion pattern segregated into three unique diagrams. The following gives a brief description of the motion of the vehicle and its relative placement under the chassis of the truck.

The above figures give a brief idea of how the system might work. On considering a practical model of the above line diagram, we intend to replace the front and rear axle along with the tyres with this unique mechanism where in each axle both front and rear will have 4 sister pairs. Thus we would have 8 pairs in total and overall all 16 legs to support the system. From our survey related to mining and transport we found that a standard truck while loaded has to bear a load upto 16,000 kg. Keeping that in mind I intend to design the system to bear static load of 16,000 kg and accordingly carry out compressive stress analysis across its T joint sections while the body is in static condition. Taking into consideration the analysis report of the tyre I found that the dimensions of a standard tyre. The tyre model has an outer diameter of 518 mm, 218mm inner diameter and a tyre width of 144 mm.

On further calculation I found the standard dimensions of the mechanism has to scaled 4 times its original and that is how I came up with the standard model which I drew using NXCAD. The following depicts a brief model of on unit, i.e. two sister pairs

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Analysis of Theo Jansen Mechanism

As we can see from the above chassis diagram we have to mount the fixed frame of our mechanism under the chassis at the point of the front and rear tyre and weld the two consecutive at equidistant space so as not to hinder the performance of the mechanism by coming under its path.

Using our calculated dimensions Iwas finally able to apply it on one leg and create a simulation where in the one sister unit is used for walking. The following images depicts the motion of the leg.

We want to replace the tyre with the Theo Jansen Linkage mechanism. So I performed a tyre analysis which we will compare to Theo Jansen Mechanism.

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Tyre Analysis

A finite element model of a solid tyre was constructed to simulate the loading condition.

It was constructed to simulate the static compressive loading condition. The 3D FE model for static loading analysis of solid tyre constructed in this study can give reasonably good prediction of load-deflection behaviour of a real solid tyre. It can also be deduced that the distributions of analysis parameters such as strain energy density and Von Mises stress given by the FE analysis are acceptable.

A 3-D finite element model was constructed using ABAQUS finite element package to simulate the static load bearing conditions and to study the load-deflection characteristic. In the present study, a tyre model has an outer diameter of 518 mm, 218 mm inner diameter and a tyre width of 144 mm. For reason of symmetry and economy in the numerical calculations, only one quarter of the tyre model was constructed.

Distribution of strain energy density and stress The distribution of strain energy density and Von Mises stress over the half tire cross section obtained from FE analysis were examined. These parameters are generally important in mechanical design stage. The distribution of strain energy density shown indicates that strain energy density is concentrated in the middle region of the tread layer which is undergoing large deformation.

This region of high strain energy density is the same as “hot region� where temperature rises extensively leading to heat blow out failure during endurance tests. Thus area of high strain energy density can be related to the area with high heat generation. To reduce the risk of failure due to heat build up, the strain energy density should be kept minimum.

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References

[1]. Real-time 2D simulation of Jansen's sculpture using the APE physics engine.

[2]. ThyssenKrupp Fördertechnik. (2005). Business Unit: Mining.

[3]. Strandbeest: Theo Jansen from Art Futura, 2005.

[4]. Design (Constructional Characteristics) of Large Wheel Excavators. Journal of Mines, Metals, and Fuels, 34(4), 204-213 [5]. Animations and Comparison of Jansen and Klann linkages: mechanicalspider.com [6]. Rooney, T., Pearson, M., Welsby, J., Horsfield, I., Sewell, R. and Dogramadzi, S. (6–8 September 2011), Artificial active whiskers for guiding underwater autonomous walking robots, CLAWAR 2011, Paris, France [7]. http://www.tm-aktuell.de/TM5/Viergelenkketten/ Strandbeest.html [8]. C. H. Suh and C. W. Radcliffe, Kinematics and Mechanism Design, John Wiley, pp:458, 1978 9]. P. N. Sheth and J. J. Uicker, "IMP (Integrated Mechanisms Program), A Computer-Aided Design Analysis system for Mechanisms and Linkages," ASME Journal of Engineering for Industry, 94:454-464, 1972 [10]. D. Jordan and M. Steiner, "Configuration Spaces of Mechanical Linkages," Discrete and Computational [11] Bartsch, Sebastian, Timo Birnschein, Malte Ro mmermann, Jens Hilljegerdes, Daniel Ku hn, and Frank Kirchner. ”Development of the six-legged walking and climbing robot SpaceClimber.” Journal of Field Robotics 29, no. 3 (2012): 506-532.

[12] Estremera, J., J. A. Cobano, and Pablo Gonzalez de Santos. ”Continuous free-crab gaits for hexapod robots on a natural terrain with forbidden zones: An application to humanitarian demining.” Robotics and Autonomous Systems 58, no. 5 (2010): 700-711.

[13] Moro, Federico L., Alexander Spro witz, Alexandre Tuleu, Massimo Vespignani, Nikos G. Tsagarakis, Auke J. Ijspeert, and Darwin G. Caldwell. ”Horse-like walking, trotting, and galloping derived from kinematic Motion

Primitives (kMPs) and their application to walk/trot transitions in a compliant quadruped robot.”Biological Cybernetics (2013): 1-12.

[14] Sanz-Merodio, D., E. Garcia, and P. Gonzalez-de-Santos. ”Analyzing energy-efficient configurations in hexapod robots for demining applications.” Industrial Robot: An International Journal 39, no. 4 (2012): 357-364.

[15] de Santos, P. Gonzalez, E. Garcia, R. Ponticelli, and M. Armada. ”Minimizing energy consumption in hexapod robots.” Advanced Robotics 23, no. 6 (2009): 681-704.

[16] Roy, Shibendu Shekhar, and Dilip Kumar Pratihar. ”Dynamic modeling, stability and energy consumption analysis of a realistic six-legged walking robot.”Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing (2012).

[17] Jansen, Theo. The great pretender. Nai010 Publishers, 2007.

[18] Komoda, Kazuma, and Hiroaki Wagatsuma. ”A proposal of the extended mechanism for Theo Jansen linkage to modify the walking elliptic orbit and a study of cyclic base function.”

[19] Moldovan, Florina, and Valer Dolga. ”Analysis of Jansen walking mechanism using CAD.” Solid State Phenomena 166 (2010): 297-302.