Many creatures on land move around on legs, but humans have, for millennia, amplified this possibility by using wheels. Indeed, we make a large variety of vehicles with wheels, starting with roller skates, small wheeled sleds tied to the feet, and going up to giant construction machines that can carry many tonnes of materials.
Our villages, and the areas surrounding them, are full of paths, trodden flat by the movement of people and animals. This was the way things remained, for thousands of years, as civilisation developed.
But then, the use of wheeled vehicles became common, and they need ‘better’ roads, in order to ensure a comfortable ride.
Given our innate human curiosity, and attitude to solving problems, it isn’t clear why we chose to create wheels. They aren’t a particularly natural model, in that there are hardly any naturally evolved wheeled or rolling forms.
We have, though, developed many fascinating ways of linking things together, that achieve interesting results.
Noted artist Theo Jansen has been using this skill for many years now, on the Atlantic beaches of The Netherlands, making interesting machines. He calls them Strandbeests, animals that walk on soft sandy beaches.
They move by themselves on the soft uneven surfaces, some going down to the waterfront, then returning, some catch the wind in their sails, some hold compressed air in tubes to power themselves. And he keeps finding new ways to make machines.
The key to his devices, though, that sets them apart from anyone that has been done before on scale, is that they are autonomous walking machines.
Another class of moving machines, though, need to be powered, either by human (and animal, ie draught) muscle, or by engines. This creates a new and special need, which is to optimise controlling the effort to move.
Jansen has worked out the exact geometry needed to minimise the amount of energy his legs need, in order to move the machine without such control.
A different geometry delivers the very simplest movement possible, which is two motions in perfect perpendicular directions. When the ends are exactly the same distance from the centre of motion, they describe a circle. In other words, they are the same as a wheel.
A machine that takes a fixed vertical movement, but adjusts the horizontal movement in a controlled manner can also give an optimal amount of energy delivered to move a vehicle, but the difference is that the control is now in the hands of the operator. In fact, it can literally be in the hands, by using a lever operated by hand.
The main difference, as mentioned above, between the Jansen design and a design evolved from a wheel (by adjusting a motion derived from a circle) is that the latter allows for complete control.
This is something that Jansen doesn’t need, for his Strandbeests to work beautifully, but it’s very useful if we want to make a barrow, or a bicycle, or any kind of wagon. The core design has been dubbed ‘Rewheel’, since it, literally, reinvents the wheel.
A group of interested individuals, who began working together a while back, building innovative tools and services under the auspices of the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (an autonomous institution in Mumbai that is part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research scientific centres), have dubbed this class of legged vehicles as ‘Chalopedes’. They can use anything from one to many legs, or rewheels, in order to create vehicles that are far more independent of terrain than any simple wheeled carts.
The focus of activities has spread beyond HBCSE to a new kind of learning centre, that is named the Living Academy. It embodies learning by doing, and has used a range of simple hand and machine tools to build its own learning laboratory, equipped with facilities for participants to learn, by building mechanical, chemical and electronic devices. The first of such centres is located in Pune, and is open to school and college going children to come and participate.
In the coming months, both Jansen and controlled power walking machines will be built as proof of concept demonstration devices.
The purpose is to focus initially on devices that deliver a practical value, that can be built in any workshop anywhere, using readily affordable materials. Such value may range from concept demonstration, following the Jansen model, to practical devices such as bicycles and carts, to move people and goods, using lanes that may not be high quality of surface paths and roads.
Models built in the Living Academy will be taken physically to demonstrate the concepts and techniques to workshops of any level of sophistication, beginning with the simplest, that might not have ready access to electricity.
As with the original Rewheel, all designs in this project are free to use, in the hope that widespread usage will reduce the current demand for high quality roads to be built in highly unsuitable and fragile terrains. The consequences of this single minded purpose has already had dire consequences in some hill regions, particularly the Himalayan foothills, and the impact on water flows in the country has never been assessed or debated.
With designs and design thinking like this, not just change, but another world is possible.
