According to JEE News report, scientists have created a first-of-its-kind mannequin called ANDI that is capable of acting as a human body and functions similar to the thermal functions of the human body.
ANDI sweats and breathes indoor-outdoor. It also has 35 different level areas.
According to the Arizona State University team behind ANDI, each part of the surface is individually controlled by temperature sensors, heat flux sensors and pores that wick sweat.
Konrad Rykaczowski, associate professor at the university’s School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, plans to use ANDI to measure the effects of extreme heat on human health.
He said: “ANDI sweats; he generates heat, shivers, walks and breathes. There’s a lot to do for extreme heat, but there’s also a lot missing. We’re a very good trying to understand how it affects the human body) so we can quantitatively design things to deal with it.
It is designed to better understand the heat stress on humans and why extreme weather is so deadly.
The university developed a heat chamber where experts can experiment with exposure to heat from different regions of the Earth.
It’s built with internal cooling channels that allow it to stay cool enough to withstand extreme heat while “measuring the complex variables that contribute to our perception of heat in different environments”.
Jenny Wanos, associate professor in the ASU School of Sustainability, said: “You can’t put humans in extreme heat conditions and test what happens.
“But there are situations in the Valley that we know of where people are dying from the heat and we still don’t fully understand what’s going on. ANDI can help us figure that out.”
“We can transfer different BMI [body mass index] models, different age characteristics and different clinical conditions [into ANDI],” said Ankit Joshi, ASU research scientist and ANDI’s lead operator.
“A diabetic patient has a different thermal regulation than a healthy person. So we can account for all these modifications with our customized models.
The team aims to create a new way to help combat the effects of heat that could include cooling clothing or exoskeletons for backpacks, designed for cooling support.
