Giving Santos™ Life: Physiological Systems
To model Santos's™ heart rate, his oxygen uptake is used. A person's oxygen uptake is the actual amount of oxygen the muscles use to perform their activities. This oxygen has to be circulated by the heart. As the demand for energy goes up, the amount of oxygen required by the muscles also increases and hence the heart rate increases.
The energy produced by the muscles is both anaerobic and aerobic. During the first seconds of activity, the energy produced is primarily anaerobic. The oxygen uptake is calculated by determining the ratio of anaerobic to aerobic contributions.
Blood pressure is also known to increase rapidly during exercise, due to the increase in overall resistance of the blood vessels. Future plans include modeling the breathing rate, the water loss, nutritional requirements to replenish energy stores. The body temperature is also to be modeled, as increases in body temperature are crucial for body performance.
Graph showing plot of heart rate vs. time, from a simulation run on Santos™. The steep slope for the fi rst couple of minutes is due to the fact that initial energy contribution is almost entirely by anaerobic processes. Within a few minutes, the rate of increase of the slope reduces (approach the steady state) once the entire work load is being borne by aerobic processes.
