A study recently published in Advanced Science it is made from the stuff of arachnophobes’ nightmares. And it turns out that a team of scientists from Rice University has built a robot using as an external casing a dead spider.
Basically they were looking for a small robot with grippers very efficient, that could lift weights much higher than their own. The initial idea could be to put all the necessary electronics in a metal casing built by them. But who wants to spend a fortune to build something that nature has already crafted with the precision that characterizes her?
The key, as they soon understood, was to use dead spiders. And it is that these animals have everything you need. Its legs can be used as tweezers, lift up to 130% of their weight and, moreover, its movement is governed by a hydraulic system which can bypass after his death. At the moment they have only carried out a proof of concept, but the results have been so positive that perhaps in a few years we could visit a factory plagued by an infinity of well-organized spiders. Yes, there it is again: the stuff of nightmares.
The keys to building robots using dead spiders
In the case of human beings, our locomotor system It is based on pairs of muscles located in the extremities that act in an antagonistic way: when one contracts, another relaxes.
However the spiders movement it’s very different. Their legs have only one flexor muscle that draws each limb inward. Instead, for the opposite movement they have a central system that serves for all the legs. It is a camera, called prosomewhich is located in the center of the body and works through a hydraulic system. That is, it contains a liquid whose pressure can be controlled by the animal’s nervous system through a set of valves that allow it to control each leg independently. In fact, according to explain in TheVergethis is the reason why the legs of spiders they shrink when they die. The flexor muscle pulls them in and the hydraulic system has already lost that control that could push them out again.
Now, what use is a dead spider to us then? It may seem counterproductive, but that is precisely the quality that so interested these scientists. They saw that the hydraulic system of arachnids could be controlled simply sticking a needle into the prosoma. This would allow air to move in and out, changing the pressure on the liquid and moving the legs.
If you add a adequate electronic system, that nervous system that is no longer there could be introduced. The movements of the legs could be controlled to use them as the pincers of one of those old machines with stuffed animals inside. We would therefore be facing a robot spider. In fact, in the video below you can see how the result is overwhelmingly similar to the movement of those machines.
Following the tradition of our ancestors
The authors of this study insist that, in reality, what they do is not so new. For thousands of years, humans have used to their advantage what nature gave them. Some used skins to make coats. Others made arrowheads out of bones. Each one used the resources as he could and now, in the age of robots, this was the minimum we could reach.
The necrobotic, as this discipline has been called, begins with spiders, but surely in the future it will surprise us with more types of robot. After all, it is a new cycle of life. A little different from what we are used to, but well, let it not be said that humans are not original. Tremble, Mufasa.