Magnetic boots. Would an exoskeleton help?

[SomeGuy123]

First of all, has anyone actually tried to walk around in "magnetic boots" in a microgravity environment?  Does it work at all as is?

My hunch is that the problem is that without gravity or correct signals from your inner ear, it's very difficult to stay "upright" and walk.  I think your arms end up flailing around fruitlessly without gravity to provide a restoring and damping force on your upper torso.

Is this roughly correct?  Note also that "magnetic boots" is just a catch all term : if you wanted to walk on non ferrous flat surfaces (like glass) you could use electroadhesion pads like geckos use.

Anyways, my thought is an external, powered exoskeleton - something with internal cables and lots of motors - could act like a replacement for gravity.  It would automatically keep your at 90 degrees to the surface you are on.  It would tug on your arms to keep them from flailing around and keep your upper torso in the correct posture.  It would recognize muscle activations in your thighs and assist you in placing your feet for the next step.  It would use LIDAR to sense the terrain in front of you to help with this.

With a little training you could walk around normally.  As long as your feet are flat on something you could also use tools more or less normally as the exoskeleton -> decking connection is basically helping you replace the forces you are used to when you try to use a wrench or something. 

 

[lajoswinkler]

It would be quite difficult because you can't lean forward to use gravity. When we walk, we lean forward, and legs are keeping up with the body that wants to tip over. It's a delicate balance. That's why it's difficult for kids to learn walking. They start walking and then fall on their asses. Or they don't tilt properly, then begin to fall forward, freeze and smack their faces into the floor. Takes a while for the brain systems to figure all those inputs out: localized pressure on feet and toes, visual inputs, inner ear inputs, ... So babies extend their arms to help balance themselves. It's easier to pull arms back than to use feet and toes to stop forward tilting.

 

Without gravity, your muscles and tendons

would have to pull the upper body. It has mass so it resists movement, and there's nothing to pull it in the direction of walking. It would cause serious strain, probably bursitis, too.

[SomeGuy123]

5 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

It would be quite difficult because you can't lean forward to use gravity. When we walk, we lean forward, and legs are keeping up with the body that wants to tip over. It's a delicate balance. That's why it's difficult for kids to learn walking. They start walking and then fall on their asses. Or they don't tilt properly, then begin to fall forward, freeze and smack their faces into the floor. Takes a while for the brain systems to figure all those inputs out: localized pressure on feet and toes, visual inputs, inner ear inputs, ... So babies extend their arms to help balance themselves. It's easier to pull arms back than to use feet and toes to stop forward tilting.

 

Without gravity, your muscles and tendons

would have to pull the upper body. It has mass so it resists movement, and there's nothing to pull it in the direction of walking. It would cause serious strain, probably bursitis, too.

EXOSKELETON.

Sheesh, please read the post before replying.  There is an external skeleton.  It is driven by servos and cables.  It pulls and pushes on the torso, the upper limbs, the lower limbs, the head to mimic gravity as if gravity were coming from the flat surface you are standing on.

User is strapped down into this thing by dozens and dozens of straps.  

I'm well aware of this problem, and you seem to have completely ignored my proposed solution in your haste to restate the problem in admittedly better terms.

So the EXOSKELETON "pulls on the upper body, and pulls it in the direction of walking".  

Edited January 16, 2016 by SomeGuy123

[lajoswinkler]

I've read it, but that's not walking. It's no different than sitting in a pod that grabs the surface and moves along it.

[fredinno]

I think that something like this would only put gravity on certain parts of the body, meaning that things like bone loss would still happen.

[Elthy]

Its way easier to move around using your hands in micro-gravity. I dont see the reason for some sort of walking. If humanity would try to adjust to living in micro-gravity it would propably replace feet with a second pair of hands (which would look very creepy)

[FleshJeb]

Vision plays a big role in how we orient ourselves. In my personal experience, it's more critical than the inner ear. I failed a field sobriety test when they wouldn't let me wear my glasses. I blew 0.00% on the breathalyzer afterward.

[SomeGuy123]

2 hours ago, Elthy said:

Its way easier to move around using your hands in micro-gravity. I dont see the reason for some sort of walking. If humanity would try to adjust to living in micro-gravity it would propably replace feet with a second pair of hands (which would look very creepy)

It's to help you use tools so you can work with both hands.  Even turning a screwdriver, you will begin to rotate as you try to apply torque to the screwdriver because gravity isn't pulling your body down.  

 

2 hours ago, fredinno said:

I think that something like this would only put gravity on certain parts of the body, meaning that things like bone loss would still happen.

Yes, the exoskeleton would not be intended to prevent that.  It's to help workers build things while working on them in space.

Consider this - use Bigelow aerospace's inflatable hab technology, you could have gigantic balloon hangers where you could breathe normally inside.  They'd be in low gravity though, but you could have large spacecraft inside and work on them in comfort.  You would need some means to reduce the effects of microgravity and a jet pack that uses fans to propel yourself around.

Edited January 17, 2016 by SomeGuy123

[Rune]

18 hours ago, SomeGuy123 said:

It's to help you use tools so you can work with both hands.  Even turning a screwdriver, you will begin to rotate as you try to apply torque to the screwdriver because gravity isn't pulling your body down. 

... and in that case, hands to anchor yourself when exerting torque would be even more useful. We already do this when we go underwater, Earth's closest analog to microgravity. We don't try to walk on the sea floor, we propel ourselves by "climbing" it. A solid surface doesn't have to be thought out as a floor in a microgravity environment, you know.

 

Rune. Just like the monkeys we are!

Edited January 17, 2016 by Rune

[SomeGuy123]

35 minutes ago, Rune said:

... and in that case, hands to anchor yourself when exerting torque would be even more useful. We already do this when we go underwater, Earth's closest analog to microgravity. We don't try to walk on the sea floor, we propel ourselves by "climbing" it. A solid surface doesn't have to be thought out as a floor in a microgravity environment, you know.

 

Rune. Just like the monkeys we are!

Well, ok.  Here's the real reason I was interested.  Spinning rotors for pseudogravity are a real pain.  Large manned interplanetary vessels or large space stations might some day have sections of them that spin, but the structural stress from doing this among other things means you want to leave most of the vessel in microgravity or under acceleration from the engine only.  

Anyways, in a video game like Space Engineers, it is considerably easier to control your character if you can "run around" on the decking in your ship.  Part of this may be the game's fault and part of it may be inherent limitations to WASD/duck/jump as a control scheme. 

So I wondered if a game that let your walk around when your character is wearing an exoskeleton was physically unrealistic.  It might not be plausible, in the history of manned space flight no one may ever do this, but is it POSSIBLE to walk around normally if you have that attachment to the deck and a stiff suit that does most of the work.

[Temstar]

The problem with microgravity is not that we can't get our foot on the ground. It's that in microgravity your body degrades in various ways (bone density, heart size, immune system etc). In trying to simulate gravity by spinning you counter the physiological change. If instead of spinning you could have a pill that stops body degradation then there wouldn't be any need for simulated gravity.

Floating around using your arms and having hand holds all over your space ship work just fine for locomotion, I can see benefit for construction work if with a flip of a switch you could anchor yourself to an arbitrary point on the ship's hull, but walking is unnecessary.

[peadar1987]

On 16/01/2016 at 11:40 PM, Elthy said:

Its way easier to move around using your hands in micro-gravity. I dont see the reason for some sort of walking. If humanity would try to adjust to living in micro-gravity it would propably replace feet with a second pair of hands (which would look very creepy)

Yes, but you could flip four birds at someone, which would be a giant leap forwards for our species!

[T-Bouw]

Hmm, before reading this topic I never thought that a space walk using magnetic boots could be difficult.
Although I still think it could be possible albeit with a different gait.
Practical? I doubt it.

About the muscle atrophy. Most spacefarers work out to counter this effect to some extent, so it's not that they'll develop completely useless legs.

[Rune]

17 hours ago, SomeGuy123 said:

Well, ok.  Here's the real reason I was interested.  Spinning rotors for pseudogravity are a real pain.  Large manned interplanetary vessels or large space stations might some day have sections of them that spin, but the structural stress from doing this among other things means you want to leave most of the vessel in microgravity or under acceleration from the engine only.  

Anyways, in a video game like Space Engineers, it is considerably easier to control your character if you can "run around" on the decking in your ship.  Part of this may be the game's fault and part of it may be inherent limitations to WASD/duck/jump as a control scheme. 

So I wondered if a game that let your walk around when your character is wearing an exoskeleton was physically unrealistic.  It might not be plausible, in the history of manned space flight no one may ever do this, but is it POSSIBLE to walk around normally if you have that attachment to the deck and a stiff suit that does most of the work.

Oh... so you want a specific outcome and are just massaging the physics until it approaches the image you already have in your mind. That's quite different!

Then imagine what you will, and likely an exoskeleton would indeed work. In fact, I doubt it needs power, just judicious locking of articulations at the right times so the astronaut can exert force in the desired direction. At most, a complicated software and some accelerometers to keep track of things, at best you just have to train with it in order to learn when to lock each section of your legs, during each step, from your glove controls, or something along those lines.

 

Rune. Then again, don't be surprised when in RL the thing never gets built, since in RL it would serve no purpose.

Edited January 18, 2016 by Rune

[RainDreamer]

for some reason i feels like skating with magnetic wheels would be easier than walking.

[mikegarrison]

35 minutes ago, RainDreamer said:

for some reason i feels like skating with magnetic wheels would be easier than walking.

Yeah, the problem with "magnetic boots" is that if they are too strong you wouldn't be able to walk in them, and if they are too weak they would be insecure. They are often used in fiction as a magical way to overcome plot issues of microgravity.

IRL the solutions that seem to have worked are handholds (and, for where those are not possible, suit thrusters). And also being mechanically secured, like being held by the Canada arm.