IBOT's and Blackouts

[ElectraGlide]

Does anyone know just how many flights of stairs an IBOT can climb or descend on a full charge?? With people stuck in high rises during the blackout I was wondering if the machine could handle a big climb, say 15 floors or so . Does it have generating capacity from it's braking to charge on the descent or is that movement minimal?

Steve

[citivolus]

quote:Originally posted by ElectraGlide

Does anyone know just how many flights of stairs an IBOT can climb or descend on a full charge??
An ibot can probably descend much farther than it can climb since there is an energy increase associated with going up. How far? Lets do the thought experiment. Lets assume there are about 389 kJ of usable energy in a battery pack (6 A*hr from 1.3 to 1.0 V/cell, 60 cells) and an ibot with user weighs 190 kg (420 lb) and each flight is 3.7 m (12'). Then from E = mgh = 190*9.8*3.7 = 6.9 kJ, so each flight requires 6.9 kJ of energy. Lets further assume that we only get to use 1/2 the battery capacity to do work because of losses in the system and the energy used by the control system (note, this is just a guess but plausable). So, we get to use 389/2 = 194.5 kJ for going up which when divided by 6.9 kJ per flight gives us 28 flights on a full charge, going up. Coming down I'd guess near 50 since the energy output is so much lower. Now if we just had some drag numbers for the segway. :-)

quote:Does it have generating capacity from it's braking to charge on the descent or is that movement minimal?

I'd think it would be going too slow to regenerate anything and will probably be using power to slow the descent.

--
swiftly flying

[SegwayUtah]

Just for fun, Dean Kamen once climbed the stairs from a Paris Métro station to the restaurant level of the Eiffel Tower.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.09/kamen.html

According to the Eiffel Tower website, it is 120 meters to the 2nd floor (where the restaurant "le jules verne" is located). The first floor is somewhere between 50 meters and 95 meters above ground and contains the retaurant "altitude 95" (95 meters above sea level).

The stairs only make it to the 2nd floor, which is maybe where Mr. Kamen ended up. Regardless, climbing 150 feet or 300 feet or 400 feet of stairs is quite the feat :)

Official website:
http://www.tour-eiffel.fr/teiffel/uk/

Chris

[opti6600]

Thanks for the link, Ute! I was wondering whether it was really true that the iBOT climbed the Eiffel Tower after seeing the bumper sticker on Kamen's personal unit.

pt, can we get a link to that photo on your site?

---------
Let's just take the safety labels off of everything and let America's problem sort itself out.

[stevew]

The Ibot is meant to be someone's 'legs' for a full day, let's say 10-12 hours. So I bet it carries alot more KWH than our HT's. I know its much heavier (250lb, I think I read somewhere.) I wonder what the stated range is and how much of the overall weight is battery. While running out of juice for HT users is a pain, you can still push it home. Not an option for the Ibot user, so I'd guess it has a generous amount of battery reserve.

[dexter]

>>While running out of juice for HT users is a pain, you can still push it home. Not an option for the Ibot user...

Yes, it would be a shame for someone using an iBot to share the fate of the young woman for whom Kramer bought the cheapo electric wheelchair after Jerry parked illegally in that handicapped space.

Dave C.
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