Researchers at the Rice University have discovered a way to make a dead wolf spider’s legs unfurl and grip onto objects. They called this new type of robotics ‘necrobotics’.
Key highlights
- Researchers turned the corpses of wolf spiders into arcade-style claw machines that could pick up and move a variety of objects — including other dead wolf spiders.
- The scientists learned that spider joints were controlled through a hydraulic pressure system that fails when the arachnids die.
- The team then realized that they could reverse engineer this hydraulic system to hijack the spider’s corpse and give it a second life as a machine.
- The necrobots could pick up a wide variety of objects, including delicate electrical components, irregularly shaped meshes and, yes, dead wolf spiders.
- Spiders are also biodegradable, so using them as robot parts would cut the amount of waste in robotics.
- Ecologists could utilize necrobots to collect live insects to study from the wild without damaging them.
