Shanghai: In a technological marvel, a primary school in China’s most populous city ‘walked’ on mechanical legs to a new location earlier this month.
The entire five-storeyed Lagena Primary School building, which is 85 years old, was lifted off the ground and shifted somewhere else using technology dubbed as the ‘walking machine’, reported Daily Mail.
It was part of Shanghai city’s efforts to preserve historical structures.
Explaining the incredible process, the project’s chief technical supervisor Lan Wuji said that workers first dug around the building before engineers installed 198 mobile supports under the building.
These supports acted like robotic legs. They were divided into two groups as they alternately rose up and down, much like how human beings walk, to help move the building forward, Wuji explained to CNN.
“It’s like giving the building crutches so it can stand up and then walk,” said Wuji, whose company developed the technology in 2018.
Mission ‘moving school’ took 18 days to be completed, during which the building was rotated 21 degrees and moved 203 feet.
