Frameworks, Tensegrities and Symmetry

R. Connelly and S.D. Guest

AN EXAMPLE

A tensegrity built by David Burnett (with John Wythe) to celebrate the career of his brother Roger Burnett, who worked to elucidate the structure of the adenovirus. To help David with the design, the required geometry of the tensegrity was calculated by Ramar Pandia Raj and the authors (Pandia Raj and Guest, 2006), using the tools developed in Part II of the book. In fact the structure deviates from the ideal icosahedral form because of the effect of gravity, and this effect was later explored by Pandia Raj (Ramar and Guest, 2011) using the tools described in Part I of the book.

An image of the tensegrity produced using the software described in the final chapter of the book

THE SOFTWARE

The ideas have been implemented in software, freely available, developed by Bob Connelly and his co-workers, Allen Back, Robert Terrell, Dylan Peifer, Evan Solomonides, Maria Yompolskaya and Abram Connelly. The latest version of the software is available here.