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posted by martyb on Wednesday October 26 2016, @08:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the must-be-empty-handed dept.

Humans are said to have evolved from an ancestor that once swung through the trees to get about, free to move through the environment in almost any direction. But today, in our modern high-rise environment, if you simply want to go up or down, it's probably fair to say we've actually devolved. Stairs, elevators, and lifts all take up precious space within buildings, and they're expensive, complicated, or require endless maintenance. Now a new human-powered system prototype dubbed Vertical Walking has been developed that requires just ten percent of the effort needed to climb stairs, but can easily move a person up a vast number of floors.

[...] Designed by the Rombaut Frieling lab in Eindhoven, Netherlands, Vertical Walking uses a system of upright rails that incorporate pulleys and a clever gripping system to allow a user to incrementally move between floors in a building. Claimed to require less than 10 percent of the effort needed to climb stairs, and with no other external energy input needed, the creators assert that the prototype has been successfully proven by a wide range of people, including an amputee and an MS sufferer.

A novel way to move between floors.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @08:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @08:15PM (#419125)

    That's actually pretty cool. Nobody will actually want to use one.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @08:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @08:29PM (#419131)

    I could see this being a replacement for those powered stair-lifts for old people. Obviously you've got to figure out where to put it, so it won't be feasible for a lot of houses nor for every old person. But at just 10% of the effort of walking up the stairs and you get to do it sitting down, if it is reliable then there would probably be a decent sized market.

  • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Wednesday October 26 2016, @09:19PM

    by richtopia (3160) on Wednesday October 26 2016, @09:19PM (#419152) Homepage Journal

    Perhaps in industry, like an emergency escape shaft for a mine. But yea, I sat here trying to think of uses, and the only other use I could imagine is for a treehouse, which would be pretty cool as a kid.

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday October 27 2016, @07:17AM

      by frojack (1554) on Thursday October 27 2016, @07:17AM (#419312) Journal

      Oh I could think of a lot of people wanting to use it. Just tell them there is a free lunch upstairs.
      Because if you believe going up by one of these devices takes only 10% of the energy of stair climbing, you already believe in free lunches.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday October 26 2016, @11:19PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday October 26 2016, @11:19PM (#419198)

    Aside from the weirdness factor, I don't see any real objection to using them, especially if they only take 1/10th the effort of stairs. Seems like an ultra-low-effort ladder that could easily come with drink and bag holders built in.

    On the other hand, I see some major potential objections to *deploying* them:
    - They would appear to have much lower throughput than stairs for a given footprint. How many walkers can be in use in the space of a stairway?
    - They seem prone to traffic-based "jamming", especially under the common condition where most flow is unidirectional at any given time. If you have five people who want to go to the second floor, and only three "vertical walkers", then the last two people need to wait until two of the first three bring a walker back down.

    Now, if they had an "autonomous mode" so you could summon them like a normal elevator they could be far more useful, especially in low-traffic areas.

    And if you could run multiple walkers on the same shaft, and could autonomously transfer them between shafts, allowing for one or more each "up shafts" and "down shafts", each capable of carrying many people at a time, that might be downright compelling.

    As it is though, they seem like they might be useful for vertical maintenance shafts and the like, but not much else. And I'm betting it's a rare maintenance shaft that sees enough traffic to justify this rather than a ladder. A beautiful solution to a problem I'm not sure exists.

    • (Score: 2) by gidds on Thursday October 27 2016, @01:34PM

      by gidds (589) on Thursday October 27 2016, @01:34PM (#419394)

      I'd like to see someone use it to bring a cup of tea (or coffee, whatever's your poison) up/downstairs.  (Let alone a trayful.  Or anything else, for that matter.  I guess you could fit some sort of storage for non-fragile items, but there doesn't seem to be room, and you'd have real trouble with anything big and/or heavy.)

      So I guess this isn't going to completely replace stairs or lifts (or at least stairwells or shafts).  And if you have those anyway, then I can't see this justifying itself in addition.

      On the plus side, it looks like it exercises many more parts of the body than stairs, so it might be good for general fitness.  (Though that seems to contradict the claims of 90% less 'effort'…)

      And I'm all for people looking at new ways to do things.  There are always improvements to be made, and sometimes big advances too!  (Even if this isn't one of them…)

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