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Wearable Muscles

ethz.ch

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Re: Wearable Muscles

#31

Post by marginalia_nu »

asd4 wrote: post #30

It's a single axis version of a system my group at NASA developed: https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/pages.ashx/787/New%20weara... The internal application was to improve mobility in space suits. We had a partnership with some medical researchers looking to help patients with otherwise limited mobility. Shoulders are difficult. The human body has a lot of amazing degrees of freedom. One of the biggest challenges was…

A lot of the design of the human body sacrifices strength for mobility and range of motion. Most muscles have really unfortunate mechanical leverage, to the degree it's quite impressive we're so strong as we are.

Adding to that, without completely butchering mobility is probably no easy task.

Re: Wearable Muscles

#33

Post by pg5 »

When you build muscle, the bones get stronger too. I'm curious how far you could go with this before getting the risk of breaking your bones.

Re: Wearable Muscles

#34

Post by HPsquared »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #31
asd4 wrote: post #30

It's a single axis version of a system my group at NASA developed: https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/pages.ashx/787/New%20weara... The internal application was to improve mobility in space suits. We had a partnership with some medical researchers looking to help patients with otherwise limited mobility. Shoulders are difficult. The human body has a lot of amazing degrees of freedom. One of the biggest challenges was…

A lot of the design of the human body sacrifices strength for mobility and range of motion. Most muscles have really unfortunate mechanical leverage, to the degree it's quite impressive we're so strong as we are. Adding to that, without completely butchering mobility is probably no easy task.

That's probably the secret of the shoulder, it's strong(-ish) in some directions and very weak in others.

Re: Wearable Muscles

#35

Post by 2-718-281-828 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #31
asd4 wrote: post #30

It's a single axis version of a system my group at NASA developed: https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/pages.ashx/787/New%20weara... The internal application was to improve mobility in space suits. We had a partnership with some medical researchers looking to help patients with otherwise limited mobility. Shoulders are difficult. The human body has a lot of amazing degrees of freedom. One of the biggest challenges was…

A lot of the design of the human body sacrifices strength for mobility and range of motion. Most muscles have really unfortunate mechanical leverage, to the degree it's quite impressive we're so strong as we are. Adding to that, without completely butchering mobility is probably no easy task.

I'm also impressed everytime I lift weights and think about how close the muscles attach to the joint providing very little leverage. On a side note - this is why chimps f.x. are so strong - their muscles attach further from the joints and by that provide more leverage.

Re: Wearable Muscles

#36

Post by krferriter »

HPsquared wrote: post #34
marginalia_nu wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the design of the human body sacrifices strength for mobility and range of motion. Most muscles have really unfortunate mechanical leverage, to the degree it's quite impressive we're so strong as we are. Adding to that, without completely butchering mobility is probably no easy task.

That's probably the secret of the shoulder, it's strong(-ish) in some directions and very weak in others.

And why people dislocate their shoulders so frequently, just doing like normal things. Someone I knew dislocated his shoulder swimming freestyle. Just happened.

Re: Wearable Muscles

#37

Post by martin_a »

This is a _really_ nice website.

- Great font, I've always liked the DIN Font for its clarity (DIN is a German industrial norm)

- font-size and line-height match each other well and follow best-practices (line-height is 1.4 times the font-size)

- well-fitting margins after paragraphs

- clear distinction between headline and text, this also applies to meta information etc.

- line length is All in all very well done.

edit: There's obviously even more like choice of colors, contrast, graphical elements etc. Just wanted to point out that someone really thought about this and not just installed some theme and that's it.

Re: Wearable Muscles

#38

Post by adrian_b »

aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #16
10000truths wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem of “flying” in the sense you describe is fundamentally limited by the square cube law. Even birds, whose anatomies are literally evolved for flight, will have a tough time staying in the air if they are scaled up to have a similar mass to us humans.

There were pterosaurs much larger than humans.

While there were pterosaurs as large as a giraffe (having similar proportions when on ground), they were very light for their size, probably no more than 2 to 4 times heavier than a human.

Re: Wearable Muscles

#39

Post by agentwiggles »

thejohnconway wrote: post #29
centixel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia says a Pteranodon[0] might have weighed up to 200kg. I wonder if the different mix of gases in the atmosphere during the Cretaceous period made any difference to how much weight could be supported while flying. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pteranodon

Annoyingly, the wikipedia article was wrong, and mistakenly gave the figures for Quetzalcoatlus in that paragraph. Pteranodon weighed more like 20-30kg (I've edited it). The constraint on the size of flying animals is launch, not flight. Pterosaurs could get bigger than birds because they used quadrupedal launch, meaning they could use their flight muscles during the initial leap.

I never cease to be amazed how damn _big_ dinosaurs were. The size comparison on the page for Quetzalcoatlus is seriously mind boggling - the thing was almost the size of a small plane!

Re: Wearable Muscles

#40

Post by tomjakubowski »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #35
marginalia_nu wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the design of the human body sacrifices strength for mobility and range of motion. Most muscles have really unfortunate mechanical leverage, to the degree it's quite impressive we're so strong as we are. Adding to that, without completely butchering mobility is probably no easy task.

I'm also impressed everytime I lift weights and think about how close the muscles attach to the joint providing very little leverage. On a side note - this is why chimps f.x. are so strong - their muscles attach further from the joints and by that provide more leverage.

Yep, and they vary somewhat from person to person. I think it's part of why some people are apparently stronger than they look: longer tendons give more leverage with less muscle mass.
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