NDI has pores that sweat beads like humans.
Scientists say they have built the first “breathing, sweating, shivering” robot designed to cope and adapt to different temperatures.
The temperature-sensitive “thermal mannequin”, called ANDI, has 35 individually controlled surfaces with pores that drip beads of sweat like humans.
Designed by US company Thermetrics for use by researchers at Arizona State University, the robot was built to provide a better understanding of the effects of extreme temperatures on human bodily health.
“ANDI sweats, generates heat, shivers, walks and breathes,” says Konrad Rykaczewski, principal investigator of the ASU research project, whose work aims to identify and measure the effects of extreme heat on humans.
“There’s a lot of great work on extreme heat, but there’s also a lot missing. We’re trying to develop a very good understanding of how heat affects the human body so we can quantitatively design things to address it.”
Some of the 10 sweating robots built by the researchers are already being used by clothing companies to test clothes, but ASU’s android is the only one that can be used outdoors.
This allows for previously impossible experiments in extremely hot environments and studies on the effect of solar radiation.
ASU researchers plan to test ANDI in heat-prone areas around Phoenix this summer to understand how different ages and body types are affected by high temperatures.
“We can import different body mass index patterns, different age characteristics, and different health issues [into ANDI],” says Ankit Joshi, an ASU research scientist and ANDI’s chief operator who is leading the modeling efforts.
“A diabetic has a different thermal regulation than a healthy person. So we can account for all these changes with our personalized models.”
The results will be used to design interventions such as cooling clothing and technologies to prevent heatstroke and heat-related deaths.
