Last year, we showed you the “Walking Bicycle” project, inspired by Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest kinetic art. Today we stumbled over something similar. Earlier this year, Mark Ellis posted a video on YouTube that shows a lot of the design, re-design, and construction of the “Playa Crawler” wheelchair, which looks like it just escaped the movie Wild Wild West from 1999 with Will Smith and Kevin Kline. What a cool project!
Ok so, as it doesn’t have wheels, it can’t be really called a “wheelchair” but think of it as a walking wheelchair if you like. Ellis built this to get around at the Burning Man event because he wanted something special to match the spirit of the festival. He further states that the leg linkage was actually the one that was invested by Theo Jansen. Ellis concludes in the video description that this kind of chair will not become a wheelchair alternative as wheels are more efficient as a means of transportation. Still interesting to watch, that awesome little spider chair, don’t you think?
YouTube: The Playa Crawler Construction
The video owner does not wish for the video to be embedded on other sites than YouTube. Watch it by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzehmObSjAE
Photo credit: The feature image is a still image from the video by Mark Ellis.
