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> legged vehicles have many downsides but one big upside is that you can theoretically avoid the rubber/microplastic particulate emission associated with tires
by jpk 2y ago
> 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.
How do you square this idea with the fact that my running shoes wear out? I'm a legged vehicle, and it's clear that the soles of my shoes wear down over time and the lost mass of the rubber went somewhere.
Whether legs or wheels, there are going to be contact patches that have to endure some quantity of sheering force when the vehicle is doing anything other than remaining stationary. It's this sheering force that grates the particulates away from tires, and I presume a legged vehicle would need a tire-like compound on the surfaces it uses to contact the road. So why would legs be different in this regard?
- burkaman 2y agoYou could wear wooden clogs or something. It would be uncomfortable but if you were a robot you wouldn't care. They would still wear out, but sawdust is less permanent than microplastics.
- conceptme 2y agoBefore they used wooden tires
- cenamus 2y agomost wooden clogs come with rubber soles nowadays to make them bearable to wear for more than an hour
- brnt 2y agoOr, we should stop paving road surfaces so wooden clogs work again as intended without being painful after a while.
- rtkwe 2y agoPaving is a solution to a much worse problem of huge maintenance costs of non paved roads and paths. Unimproved dirt doesn't stand up well and gravel needs more maintenance than paving as well.
- card_zero 2y agoBefore there was asphalt/tarmac/blacktop there was "macadam", which was tarmacadam without the tar. But it used to kick up huge amounts of dust, so it was normal to pour water on the roads in hot weather.
- rtkwe 2y agoDoesn't seem like that would be significantly better to walk on compared to modern paved surfaces with all wood clogs as mentioned in this thread though. Never worn them though so maybe it would be.