I’m sure many people can agree with the fact that spiders can be scary and creepy. Some are harmless and actually help us by keeping insect pests in check. While others are venomous and can inflict significant pain and might even cause death. Do you know how to make them even creepier? Turning them into dead robotic spiders.
Researchers at Rice University, Texas, use dead spiders and transformed them into robots and they called them ‘necrobotics’.
Apparently, the reason why dead spiders can still move and lift heavy objects more than 130% of their weight was due to flexor muscles, and this allowed the spider legs to curl in and extend them outward by hydraulic pressure.
Researchers discovered they could simulate the action of this pressure, expanding the spider’s legs outward, by pumping air into the dead spider.
This research of necrobotic could be useful in the field of repetitive tasks such as microelectronics assembly and the researchers said, since the spiders are biodegradable, unlike robots built with metals and electronics, there won’t be any big waste issues.
Let’s hope these necrobotics won’t have AI installed on them in the future. Skynet anyone?
