Art and science complement each other very nicely in this incredibly cool and simple paper kit to build an articulated horse by James Watt from Clockwork Robotics.  (Any relation to the Steam Engine linkage inventor James Watt?)

It may not look all that interesting in the static photo above, but check out this video of the model in motion!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HILp4VyEi6g]

The natural motion of the model is derived from a neat construct of linkages driven by a single small motor.  Here’s a small animated GIF of the CAD model that abstracts the linkages and the drive motor.

James’ site has some great images of his initial brainstorming that led to a few art pieces and the eventual paper kit product.

(Note that it all starts with a little brainstorming on the chalk board or notebook!)

The folks over at Make magazine have a nice sequence of images outlining their step-by-step assembly of the ~$15 kit which only took them a few hours.

For any of you participating in the FIRST or other similar robotics competitions, this kit is a great intro to customizing complex motions through multi-arm linkage design.  For you artist-types, don’t let the enginering mumbo-jumbo put you off, as it’s only a few hours of cutting, folding and pasting!

For those of you REALLY into this type of design/art, you can find some nice curriculum materials with real-life applications of kinematic design and hands-on crafty engineering excellence over at the fantastic Cornell University KMODDLE site.  They are perfect for high school math, physics, and robotics classes, and some would even inspire the precocious middle schooler.  If there is any interest I can post some follow-on materials and pointers to those lessons.

In the meantime, go forth and design.  And don’t forget to post your comments, pictures and results here if you build one of these or anything inspired herefrom!