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Robot Can Do More Push-Ups Because It Sweats
- highd 10y agoI wonder how effective the micro-porous aluminum is at transferring heat from a cooling fluid to a heat sink. That might be useful even in active, non-evaporative cooling systems.
- rosser 10y agoIsn't heat transfer very closely tied to surface area (among other things)?
- highd 10y agoThat's my thinking - so this should have crazy surface area. You could make some really awesome aluminum parts. Create a dense exterior with some interior "strut" infill structure and a very porous fill and put plumbing fixtures on the ends. Super strong, lightweight parts that you can cool at crazy rates. I wonder if this would work for aerospace? IIRC cooling the components exposed to exhaust can be a big limitation.
- gumby 10y agoOh man, keeping the flow laminar over all those transfer surfaces, and of course increasing the work because of the obstructions to flow...so many fun engineering problems!!
- tajen 10y agoExactly, they don't provide measurements and comparisons, for example I'd love to know the temperature spike of the motors when it's cooled and when it's not (e.g. when they have to programmatically stop it because it risks overheating). Active motors still work at ~ 100°℃, can't they?
- gumby 10y agoThere's a lot of (unfortunately) classified knowledge in this area. For example the SR-71 used its fuel as a coolant -- they had a lot of crazy thermal problems (that they worked out on slide rules!)
- djrogers 10y agoThis is brilliant. Evaporative cooling is extremely efficient, and the use of laser sintered aluminum in the support structure to facilitate it is flat out genius. It's like we're living in the future.
- agumonkey 10y agorelated to man vs horse http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2012/06/long_distance_running_and_evolution_why_humans_can_outrun_horses_but_can_t_jump_higher_than_cats_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2012/06/long...
- sp332 10y agoYou can go the other way and add closed-loop cooling to a person http://news.stanford.edu/2012/08/29/cooling-glove-research-082912/ http://news.stanford.edu/2012/08/29/cooling-glove-research-0... Apparently it's been commercialized already http://www.avacore.com/ http://www.avacore.com/
- bagels 10y agoThese are used extensively in endurance automobile racing, and in desert racing. Keeps you much more alert, especially in hot environments. Well, not the glove, but a shirt and or pants: https://store.windingroad.com/fast-cool-suit-system---no-air---no-shirt-p90.aspx https://store.windingroad.com/fast-cool-suit-system---no-air...
- joshu 10y agoI wear a cool shirt even for sprint races (30 minutes) - it can be 110 degrees at the track and the nomex fire suit gets hot.
- niels_olson 10y agoSome surgeons also use active cooling systems. The patient is being actively warmed and the surgeon, gowned and gloved, is cooled. The anaesthesiologist is juuuust right.
- saganus 10y agoWhy would it help a surgeon to be cool? for the regular reason that everyone works better when at a comfortable temp or due to a specific medical reason?
- sp332 10y agoMaybe so sweat doesn't get in their eyes? Just a guess though.
- niels_olson 10y ago
- fairpx 10y agoWe humans look smart when we manage to create a bad copy of a tiny part of nature. How small we are.
- Waterluvian 10y agoI know! And isn't that just the greatest?! Look at just how much more we have to learn and do!
- Zikes 10y agoTo be fair, nature had a 3.5 billion year head start.
- legolas2412 10y agoAnd an entire earth and no concept of animal rights.
- saulrh 10y agoAnd we're still beating it in some ways! Sintered aluminium bones with nonuniform porosity to optimize evaporation? Fuckin' metal.
- gumby 10y agoBut heavier than bone. And about 50% of all instances are distributed factories.
- spqr0a1 10y agoRegular bones are also structure with non-uniform porosity. But to optimize something like strength-to-weight ratio by reinforcing areas under the most stress. http://classes.mst.edu/civeng120/lessons/composite/materials/examples/human_body.html http://classes.mst.edu/civeng120/lessons/composite/materials...
- Cybiote 10y agoI think that's about as fair as saying "No, those three lines of code is actually millions of lines of code". After all, it's arbitrary wherever you set the cut off (e.g. it's worth noting that human level intelligence wasn't first invented by humans).
- dmix 10y agoAs soon as I saw the robot's face mask I knew it was going to be Japan.
- artursapek 10y agoI'm really amused by the artistic pointlessness of a robot doing push-ups.
- anigbrowl 10y agoIt's not pointless. It's a familiar enough exercise that people can get a realistic idea of the energy expenditure this robot could be expected to perform in the field with the right control software.
- cfmcdonald 10y agoThose are some really crummy push ups. Get your chest down to the floor, Private!
- taylodl 10y agoBeing as it's early in the morning and I'm still blurry-eyed, I thought the headline read 'Robot Can Do More Push-Ups Because It Swears.' Now that would have been an interesting article to have read!
- Gravityloss 10y agoRocket engines have been probing these kind of technologies for decades, and it's been proposed for re-entry vehicles too. Called transpiration cooling. Only more recently, with additive manufacturing, it's become a lot cheaper to integrate into the structures. I haven't read of anyone actually using it.