Scientists have created the world’s first “breathing, sweating, shivering” robot in a major breakthrough.
The technologically-advanced “thermal mannequin” known as ANDI has 35 controlled surfaces that allow the robot to produce sweat through ‘pores’.
Designed by US firm Thermetrics, there are just 10 ANDIs in the world.
It was designed to gauge a better understanding of the health impacts of extreme temperatures on the body.
“ANDI sweats, he generates heat, shivers, walks and breathes,” explained Konrad Rykaczewski, principal investigator for the ASU research project.
Rykaczewski continued: “There’s a lot of great work out there for extreme heat, but there’s also a lot missing.
“We’re trying to develop a very good understanding of how heat impacts the human body so we can quantitatively design things to address it.”
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Christopher Goulet/ASU
Some ANDIs are already being used by sports clothing companies to test garments. Meanwhile, ASU’s version is the first that can be used outdoors.
Jenni Vanos, associate professor in the School of Sustainability said: “You can’t put humans in dangerous extreme heat situations and test what would happen.
“But there are situations we know of in the Valley where people are dying of heat and we still don’t fully understand what happened. ANDI can help us figure that out.”
Christopher Goulet/ASU
Later this year, ANDI will be paired with ASU’s biometeorological heat robot to delve deeper into human sweating mechanisms.
Ankit Joshi, an ASU research scientist leading the modelling and operating of ANDI, said: “We can move different BMI models, different age characteristics and different medical conditions (into ANDI),”
“A diabetes patient has different thermal regulation from a healthy person. So we can account for all this modification with our customized models.”
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