3 ms·

I know these aren't intended for long-term use, and presumably not in ambulatory patients, but still, this passage gave me a tremendous amount of range anxiety:

I know these aren't intended for long-term use, and presumably not in ambulatory patients, but still, this passage gave me a tremendous amount of range anxiety: > Patients will wear a 4-kg external controller pack that contains two rechargeable batteries (providing about 5 hours of operation each), although they can also plug in directly to a power outlet. Like, the stress of finding a free outlet when I'm on 7% charge is already bad for my heart

KolmogorovComp 2y ago
That's heavy battery package. Is the heart much more efficient than these devices? I'd doubt so. Does anyone know if there's been research to extract energy from the blood directly?
- fragmede 2y ago
  given that the heart manages to operate inside the body without those two external battery packs, I'd wager that it's more efficient.
  - kaba0 2y ago
    The heart has access to the resources of the body.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      Does the human body provide more power to the fleshy heart than two large external batteries?
- jakobson14 2y ago
  The heart is massively more efficient. Just about everything in all of biology is massively more efficient. Take a moment to consider that your entire body runs on an energy budget of only around 100 watts, of which your brain only uses a measly 20 watts.