Levitated | Little Legged Creatures | Macromedia Flash open source

A collection of small, one legged swimming automatons which combine on collision.

CLICK ANYWHERE on the stage to create a new, one-legged swimming organism. There is a maximum of 11 concurrent organisms on stage.

figure a. a well formed kicking machine

figure b. a slightly less practical configuration

An organism moves about using the kicking of it's leg (or legs). Each kick produces an impulse force and a bit of faked angular momentum. Both the force and angular momentum translate into velocities which are gradually reduced with friction.

Upon collision, the larger organism will consume the smaller, aggregating it's leg structure. The most interesting result of this process is the formation of multi-legged organisms. Since the position of the aggregated legs depends upon the angle of collision, each multi-legged organism is unique. Some leg arrangements allow enhanced locomotion while others produce nonsensical movement.

Organisms with more than 4 legs will eventually swim off the stage in search of nirvana (actually, they're ugly, so I remove them when no one is looking).

jtarbell
September 27, 2001