Meet Kengoro – a partially humanoid robot. This one shows a surprising side of a human body that works out on floor flexing its muscles and tendons. The robot more than 100 motors that keep it going but these motors generate lots and lots of heat. The researchers have, however, found a way to keep those working and maintain the robot’s strength intact. Kengoro is capable of doing pushups directly for 11 minutes without getting overheating.
And how it does that? It sweats, speaking in a broad manner. Evan Ackerman from IEEE Spectrum says, “By sweating, we pump water out of our bodies, and as that water evaporates, it cools us down.” The motors cool down in this way. Steve Dent from Engadget also adds, “Unlike a normal water-cooled radiator system, liquid flows into porous aluminum bones and then evaporates on the surface to cool the motors, in the same way that sweat cools a human.”
According to Ackerman, this robot is capable of running for 12 hours on just half cup of deionized water. Dent says that this robot was built with laser sintered aluminum powder. As he quotes, “An additive manufacturing technique that can print complex structure out of metal. A low permeability piece of metal would be something like a solid brick of aluminum, while a high permeability piece of metal would have a structure full of tiny gaps and tunnels, like a sponge.”
Kengoro’s sweating takes place through porous skeleton. `”The process allows the fne control of the meral’s permeability, so the team added channels that let water flow through the bones. It then seeps to another porous region near the surface, when it evaporates and cools motors positioned next to the aluminum glands.” Toyotaka Kosuki, Shinsuke Nakashima, Yohei Kakiuchi, Masayuki Inaba, Takuma Shirai, Hirose Toshinori, and yuki Asano presented this robot recently at the IEEE Spectrum.
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