“Since about ten years he is occupied with the making of a new nature. Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic material of this new nature. He makes skeletons which are able to walk on the wind. Eventually he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.” — Theo Jansen’s bio
On the left you see a polypedal walking contraption (designed with a genetic algorithm), and on the right, a pneumatic hammer driving a stake into the ground with multiples blows (when it senses the high winds of a storm).
He showed how they harvest energy from the wind with sails and propellers and store it in compressed air bottles, which can then be used for motion or logic. He also demonstrated a pneumatic binary adder.
The creatures roam the Dutch beaches, retreating from the ocean with water sensors and avoiding dry sand. Here are some videos of the strandbeesties in action.
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