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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: 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.