Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Open Source Tensegrity (pretenst.com)
28 points by RafelMri 7 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 7 comments



Why aren't buildings constructed this way?

You could have the whole thing made in a factory which just weaves steel cable onto the ends of rods, and then pack the whole thing in a truck and on site just attach a winch to tighten the cables and your building self assembles itself.


They're very springy. A tent is similar to a tensegrity structure, and still more rigid.


I believe many (most?) of these structures tend to have single points of failure, and you don't want your whole building collapsing because a single line broke.


But it need not right? You could easily weave 6 strands in different paths through all the rods and do calculations to be sure that any two could fail and the building still stand.

Sure you now need to tighten 6 cables with a winch rather than 1 to assemble your building, but it still seems like it would be far quicker than traditional frame construction.


Traditional frame construction is a highly optimized system. A skilled framing crew can put up a house in a day. And I'm talking a crew of 3 or 4 people. It's pretty hard to beat.


And then hit it with spraycrete and hey, presto!


Obligatory link to the Lego version: https://stickyhat.com/tensegrity-lego-moc/




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: