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Theo Jansen, “we have a new wheel.”
“5,000 years after the invention of the wheel, we have a new wheel.”
Theo Jansen, who made the tall order above, spends his time crafting lifelike, kinetic animals from plastic tubes, old lemonade bottles and plastic ties. One day, he claims they will survive on their own, in flocks, crawling the beaches of Holland.
The TED talk below describes Theo’s work better words ever could:
Toward the end of his talk, Theo mentions “another couple of years, and these animals will survive on their own.” As this was nearly a year ago, I decided to follow up with him to see how the development is coming along and what discoveries he’s made within the last year. He replied:
Thank you very much for your encouraging message. On www.strandbeest.com you will find the book I wrote THE GREAT PRETENDER in the web shop
You will find all the information you need in there. If you have further questions, I will be happy to answer them.
In the attachment you will find the leg system.
I wish you a lot of success.
Best regards,
Theo Jansen
Here’s the leg system he attached to the email, click for larger version.
Since I don’t speak Dutch, and I imagine very few of our readers do, I have taken the liberty of translating the block of text from the image into English. (I would imagine it isn’t exactly right, since no two translation tools provide the same transcription. If anyone can do better, please feel free to leave a comment.)
Then he would have hundreds of thousands of years of doing. That much time was not available, so that I took my recourse to the evolution method.
In the computer, fifteen hundred legs were created with strings of arbitrary lengths. The computer examined which legs approach the ideal course curve. Of fifteen hundred, the best were selected. They were given the privilege to continue to plant. Their strings were copied and combined to fifteen hundred new legs. These fifteen hundred legs showed similarities with their parents and were tested again on their similarity to the ideal curve. This process went through many generations and the computer was on for weeks, months (day and night).
Eventually there were thirteen numbers, which indicated the ideal length for the necessary links. The ultimate result was the arm of the Animaris Currens Vulgaris. It was the first current strandbeest. Yet the resistance Vulgaris itself occasionally went violently against the run. A new computer evolution yielded the legs of the generations that followed.
Here are the magic numbers: a = 38, b = 41.5, c = 39.3, d = 40.1, e = 55.8, f = 39.4, g = 36.7, h = 65.7, i = 49, j = 50, k = 61.9, l = 7.8, m = 15.
I must admit: my curiosity is piqued. It seems to me that Theo did not have time to wait for evolution to occur organically, so he took it upon himself to help it along. This seems to be commonplace in modern technology: sometimes with positive results, other times not.
My question to you is: what do you think of this process? Should we attempt to control evolution?
Posted by tanner in experimentation, innovation, motion on 13 August 2008.
I don’t think you can actually control evolution; otherwise, it wouldn’t be evolution. Evolution is a gradual process that occurs over hundreds and millions of years…if it’s something forced, and/or hurried, it’s no longer evolution - but a mechanical and/or technological (or whatever you choose) process.
1. aw. 13 August 2008.
I find this extremely fascinating.
As far as controlling evolution is concerned, I almost find the phrasing of that – in regards to Mr. Theo’s experiments with genetic / evolutionary algorithms – slightly incongruent with what he’s doing, but I would have to say that I find the idea of expediting evolution more than slightly perverse.
That said, I think the utilization of the inherent process of evolution in nature applied to some sort of artificial “evolutionary” mechanical-design particularly ingenious. It also makes me ponder the question of what characteristics and actions constitute thought / intelligence (as exemplified with the “brains” reaction to water).
I found this interesting animation of how the legs actually work:
http://vimeo.com/714206
Thanks for the post!
2. Tyrone. 13 August 2008.
aw,
I suppose you’re right. The traditional term, evolution, almost doesn’t fit into Theo’s (and other scientist’s) modern interpretation. A new term, such as “technical evolution” seems to fit the bill a bit better.
Tyrone,
The vimeo video you posted is incredible. It really puts the above rendering Theo attached into perspective. Thanks for sharing it.
I was also inspired by his demonstration of the animal’s “brain”. The fact that he worked a little bit of binary memory into the beast really made me think.
3. tanner. 13 August 2008.
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