Inversion - Motion Mobile

Here is a wonderful kinetic mobile created for Festo, a company that specializes in automation. It is a helium filled flying object that turns itself inside out.

This is a constant and rhytmic motion called inversion.  Here is a short stop action video posted by Daniel Wall showing the shapes and how this motion is achieved. It includes a dodecahedron followed by the simpiler Schatz cube which was named after mathemetician Paul Schatz.

We have several widgets in our collection that were derived from this concept including a hexyflex wire model.

I'd love to see the helium version in motion but I can't find any reference as to where this sculpture is located. Anyone know?

 via Dug North Automata Blog

Comments

[Jeanne]

I could watch that all day. It's mesmerizing. Sorry, I don't know anything about that sculpture.

[M Pawliger]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRXGAI9r1iQ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmBajnpWPUM seem to show it is real, not a concept video. Festo showed it at the Hannover Messe trade show in 2012.

[B Kuehner]

I suspect it is in a storage room at Festo somewhere, since their site with info on it doesn't mention it being on exhibit anywhere except the trade show:
http://www.festo.com/cms/en_corp/12748.htm

They have a datasheet and contact info, so you could probably email them and ask if they plan to show it publicly in the future.