The Shanghai Evolution Shift company has just pulled off one of the most impressive robotic projects we’ve ever seen – making a building walk using 198 robotic legs. We’ve all seen structural relocation documentaries where large buildings are moved to new locations. This involves jacking up the building and installing a supporting platform on wheels, then carefully towing the building to its new site.
But the T shape of the five story, 7600 ton Lagena elementary school was problematic, and the route to the new site involved taking a curved path and rotating the building. This ruled out the more traditional methods of relocation. Robot legs came to the rescue. It took 18 days for the building to walk 62 meters and rotate 21 degrees to its new home. This project is part of a trend to preserve historic architecture rather than bulldoze everything to make space for modern buildings.
After watching the video below, we think you’ll agree that this is a unique application of robotics and an amazing engineering feat. Disclaimer – don’t try this at home. Thanks to [Chuckz] for sending us this tip.
Also, you can see a time-lapse video of the move.
Geesh !
Had to be on the cards at some point but, didn’t expect so soon. Thanks for post, cool :-)
Btw: Website not remembering my comment fill in detail, Lenovo tablet, android.
Aw. This could have been an interesting story, but there’s practically zero information presented anywhere. I wanted to see those “legs” closer, how they’re operated, how did they decide where the legs need to go and so on. The way it is….meh.
It’s because it’s just a regurge.
China is more than one step ahead on many tracks. And they know how to build the walk. Bigly. A big WIN !
The Marion 7400 was a dragline power shovel the size of a building, that was designed to move by walking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot1EB9AdoWw
I wonder how did they add that thick concrete slab under the old building! It looks like they severed the original foundation from the building in the process. Impressive.
There was a show on Discovery and now streams occasionally on Pluto channel called Extreme Moves. This is just another way instead of using rollers or sliding it on tracks. I am sure that in the far future history will have a record of how Xi Jingping went to the building and said ” MOVE ! ” and the building got up and walked away for him. 😁
They scaled up The Luggage!
Sapient concrete!
Rincewind finally cast a decent spell…..
Is fun to watch. Huge slab helped. Like most Chinese media mostly missing technicals. Sheets of plywood. Hmmm. Guess dont want to scratch up concrete but then why would need more than one each servo? Auto leveling not working as expected assuming there was .