Scientists at Arizona State University (ASU) have redesigned a robot used by sportswear apparel companies to mimic the thermal functions of the human body.
The world’s first walking pygmy that emits heat, shivers, walks and breathes like a human, could help scientists understand our body’s resistance to heat waves.
The ANDI experimental robot is equipped with artificial pores for artificial sweating and heat generation, as well as heat flow sensors on 35 different surfaces covering the body of the anthropomorphic body.
And with a new internal cooling duct, the improved ASU ANDI is the first thermal dwarf object suitable for outdoor use, meaning scientists can now expose it to the extreme temperatures of the Arizona desert without fear.
“You can’t put people in dangerous places because of the heat and see what happens,” says atmospheric scientist Jenny Fanos, assistant professor at ASU’s College of Sustainability. “But there are places in the Valley where people are dying from the heat, and we still we still don’t quite understand what’s going on, and here ANDI can help us figure it out.”
“We don’t want to do a lot of these (tests) on a real person. This is unethical and dangerous,” said Professor Konrad Rekajewski of Arizona State University.
The work of ANDI Lab is no different from that of a handful of other ANDIs who sweat in the prototype workshops of major sportswear manufacturers.
“In a diabetic patient, thermoregulation is different from that of a healthy person,” says ASU researcher Ankit Joshi, who is leading the modeling work that is part of ANDI.
The warm room can also be modified to simulate different heat exposure scenarios found in any hot spot around the world. But it’s outside, in the hot desert of the Southwest, that the modified ASU ANDI faces its toughest challenges and its biggest job.
The heat troll can sweat thanks to special internal cooling channels to circulate cold water throughout the body, and simulate and record human responses to heat from complex environments.
ANDI sensors collect unique data on body type’s interaction with solar radiation, infrared radiation emitted by warm asphalt ground, and convection propagating in the air.
And when the ASU team covered ANDI with a special cloth, his artificial sweat began to cool the robotic surfaces loaded with sensors, as if he were a real person.
ANDI will team up with a new partner: the MaRTy biometeorological thermal robot, a suite of sophisticated vehicle-mounted temperature sensors.
Source: Daily Mail
