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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.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @08:24PM
>Stairs, elevators, and lifts all take up precious space within buildings, and they're expensive, complicated, or require endless maintenance.
This is their sales pitch? That stairs take up too much space in the architecture of a building? So let's say that gets cut in half, now we can be blessed with more office cubes and fewer windows than before. Rejoice! But please let us not forget the staffers who carry things, who want to walk side-by-side, the groups that return from lunch together, and the general morale lifter of a well designed entry which includes plenty of light & inviting stairs.
This is a very fantastic demonstration of human ingenuity and of physics, and in a professional/social environment it will find no takers. Industrial applications are more likely the takers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Nuke on Wednesday October 26 2016, @10:12PM
Stairs, elevators, and lifts all take up precious space within buildings, and they're expensive, complicated, or require endless maintenance.
So this contraption will take less maintenance than stairs? The sales pitch blew it at that point. I've an even better idea - hitch a ride to a higher level on the back of a flying pig.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 27 2016, @12:14AM
Less than 10% of the energy required to climb stairs is also a specious argument... where is the energy coming from to lift a 150kg post-fast-food humanoid up several stories in a building? If the competition is elevators, then, sure, this thing could be lighter and move less excess mass, but for human powered lifting, you won't be getting 90% reduction in effort without adding something to the human power input.
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(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Thursday October 27 2016, @12:32AM
"you won't be getting 90% reduction in effort without adding something to the human power input."
Pully with gears don't know if you have ever seen one in operation but they are great little device that allow a human in the case of a car engine lift it out its compartment with very little energy expended by the human. In fact you can lift that many hundred pound engine with just one hand pulling on the chain not really putting any weight into it for leverage.
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(Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday October 27 2016, @02:04AM
Pulley systems don't magically require less energy -- they just spread the energy expenditure over a much longer time. So the force needed at any time is less, but the energy used is basically the same total.
Same thing in this case ascending stairs. Basic physics and conservation of energy says you need X joules or calories or BTUs or whatever to raise a human of mass Y up Z distance. You can spread X out for a longer time (walk up a gentle slope ramp) or concentrate X as much as possible (climb a ladder straight up), but you still need X as a minimum amount of energy. In fact, you're generally going to expend a lot more than X the more you spread it out... Like all the horizontal distance your body has to move to go up a ramp, which you don't need to do on a ladder.
So "less effort" here is very ambiguous... Either you're going to end up expending MORE energy overall (just more slowly, so it seems less laborious but takes forever, thus making 90% "less effort" seem a odd claim) or you need external energy input to assist you.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Nuke on Thursday October 27 2016, @09:13AM
"you won't be getting 90% reduction in effort without adding something to the human power input."
Pully with gears .... they are great little device that allow a human in the case of a car engine lift it out its compartment ......
Thank you Captain Obvious.
.....with very little energy
Oh dear. Confusion between "effort" and "energy". "Effort" is not an engineering term, "energy" is. You can argue that pulley hoists take less "effort" if by it you mean "force" (which is an engineering term), but then you pay for that reduced force by having to pull through more length of rope (and hence take a longer time). If you use pulleys to reduce the the force to lift the car engine by, say, a factor of 4, you will increase the length of rope you pull through by a factor of four (not precisely, but simplifying a little). It does not help that TFA uses the word "effort".
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday October 27 2016, @06:29AM
I had the same thought: Not possible to reduce energy requirements. But - it look to be true. Consider:
- The system is pre-loaded (on the lowest floor) with potential energy stored in the elastic ropes.
- As you move upwards, you are adding your own energy input, but mostly your are using the stored potential energy.
- When you move downwards, your descent stretches the elastic ropes, putting potential energy back into the system.
The problem would seem to be: Even with pulleys to artificially lengthen the ropes, they are still subject to the spring constant: they will help less and less as they shorten. Hence, as you ascend, you will have to add more and more energy yourself. Those last few floors are likely to be a bitch.
There are obviously problems, not least is convincing some people to expend *any* physical effort. But the 10% energy claim is actually believable.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday October 27 2016, @07:24AM
Maybe if all your trips are upward, and someone else takes it back down and re-loads the spring tension for you, you might do it for 10%.
But that's the logical equivalent of only going down stairs, or only sliding down a firepole, and
returning to the second floor via magical thinking.
Back to physics class for you.
TNFL.
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(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday October 28 2016, @02:02PM
Just sitting on the thing will reload the tension. Of course, you aren't going to be able to get near that 90% reduction from springs alone unless perhaps you tune it for a very specific weight, which would be useless any kind of public building. But just think of it like bungee jumping. You get on at the top, the cord stretches as you fall, and just before you slam into the pavement it slows you to a stop. At the bottom it clicks into a latch and locks, and when the next person gets on they unlock that and it yanks them back up!
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday October 30 2016, @08:57PM
when the next person gets on they unlock that and it yanks them back up!
There is no free lunch.
You do not get back anywhere near enough energy to take you back up.
Little Jimmy asked the same question [illinois.edu].
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 27 2016, @12:19PM
Thanks for reading TFA... so, pre-loaded rubber bands - great... no maintenance problems there (o.k. metal springs would last a little longer, but...)
This amounts to a pre-loaded counterweight system - maybe you consider that innovative, I toured a hand-built historic house from the early 1900s that did the same thing for their single-hung windows.
The problem becomes: during morning rush, all the mass is going up - so you have to have a lot of preload ready and waiting to move everybody into the building. Then, if you've got all that energy storage capacity, you can re-load it in the afternoon when everybody goes home. Same thing in reverse for residential buildings full of working people.
I'm envisioning a water based system where there are two big pools, one on the roof, one in the basement. Step into the elevator on the ground floor and a corresponding counterweight car is filled with water from the roof until it begins to descend. Then, to recover the energy, when an elevator is filled on a high floor, the counterweight car is filled with water from the bottom pool. Tall buildings would likely have intermediate pools along the way up. Complicated, but could be entertaining to watch if you make the counterweights clear and visible.
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