Strandbeest

This is an application of Jansen's linkage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jansen%27s_linkage

There are other similar linkages but Jansen's is quite good.

For anyone who doesn't have an idea why something like this matters or is inspiring beyond art, legged vehicles have many downsides but one big upside is that you can theoretically avoid the rubber/microplastic particulate emission associated with tires and wheeled vehicles if you can make legged vehicles as good as wheeled ones.

Even an electric battery vehicle with an electric motor charged by a solar/wind/nuclear power plant still emits pure poison into the air and waterways through friction between tires and the road.

Good alternatives would be biocompatible tires (Nitinol mesh tires like SMART Tire company's initial prototype that lacked the rubber coating) or legged vehicles.

The ratios in the Jansen linkages were originally developed through genetic algorithms in computer simulations. Jansen now builds multiple generations of machines at once and has them compete in various "survival" tasks on the beaches, prioritizing further development based on the success of each "mutation"; an ongoing human-assisted evolutionary process.

The Strandbeest machines are also capable of much more sophisticated behavior than may be evident: they pressurize air using wind power and store it in bottles, which in turn run pneumatic "nervous systems" made from logic gates, oscillators, and flip-flops. As the machines have grown more sophisticated they've gained the ability to sense the waterline (with ground-trailing hoses that detect back-pressure from water) and avoid it, to anchor themselves to the ground when it gets too windy, to steer around simple obstacles, and so on.

Strandbeest machines reproducing independently from humans would be a pipe-dream, but at the very least they should be understood as autonomous, biomimetic robots at the same time as they are sculptures.

for anyone who doesn't know the history, Carruth shopped this script around for years before giving up on finding anyone to fund it. Eventually he gave up and made a different film. And then he was arrested on charges of domestic violence, and a second victim filed a restraining order against him. Since then, he hasn't been welcome in Hollywood. The rumor is that he's returned to his old career, software engineering, where it's easier to find work.

Scale up a human for example to the weight and speed of a car. Crazy powerful and big legs, big feet, big shoes. The rubber must hit the road either way and push down with a force to propel the weight of this car-heavy legged human at speeds of 100km/h. It would still wear rubber away just like tires do.

Legged vehicles aren't a replacement for regular vehicles if tire particulates are your concern.