You might want to avoid this one if you hate spiders. Rice University's mechanical engineers have found a way to turn dead spiders into robotic helpers. You heard that one?
It's a recent development in the field of soft robotic research. The flesh from spider is soft.
Chances are you've seen a spider curl up into a ball after it dies. Spiders rely on their legs to be extended.
They lose their ability to pressurize their bodies when they die. That's why they jump up and down.
The corpses have the perfect architecture for being terrifying grabbers.
The engineers stuck a needle into the spider's corpse and sealed it off with superglue, giving them control over the legs.
The necroBots were able to lift 130 percent of their body weight with just a needle and some air. Even after 1000 cycles, they are still pretty resilient.
The Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Rice University said that soft robotics is a lot of fun because they get to use previously undiscovered materials. This is a line of inquiry. It is something that has never been used before and has a lot of potential.
There is a single word for potential. Engineers stress that they aren't reanimating anything, they're just using the carcasses as arachnid puppets
"Despite looking like it might have come back to life, we're certain that it's not, and we're using it strictly as a material derived from a once- living spider," he said. It's giving us something useful.
They will give us their word for it. Let's hope we don't see these in our local mall.
Scientists are concerned that a giant spider is spreading across the US.
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