the dead spider becomes a catch – Wel.nl

You prefer to throw a dead spider in the trash as soon as possible. But this is not the case with Faye Yap technology. He decided to take it.

It sounds less crazy than it is. Spider legs can firmly but gently grasp large, fragile, and irregularly shaped objects without breaking them.

Along with colleagues at Rice University, Yap turned a dead wolf spider into a dumpster. They call this method “necrobotic”: the thing is part dead animal and part robotic.

The spider’s legs have no muscles, but move by hydraulic pressure. By blowing some air into the legs, the scientists made the dead spider move. The animal proved capable of carrying a spider as heavy as itself.

The advantage over an ordinary robot is that it is very complex to manufacture, while a spider is already complex on its own. “Necrobotics takes advantage of the unique creations of nature that are difficult to reproduce artificially,” the researchers write in their paper. paper. Spiders are also biodegradable, so they create less waste than regular robots.

Necrobotic spiders can be used for all sorts of things. “One of the applications we see is in micro-manipulation, like in microelectronic devices,” said researcher Daniel Preston, who also helped develop the spin.

It’s him:

Sources): Scientific alert