Faye Yap, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, wondered if a dead spider coiled up in the corridor could be utilized as a robot component.
It might sound creepy for some people to witness a dead spider having mechanical grippers, but it might also have real advantages.
An employee packs a Zebra tarantula (Aphonopelma seemanni) to be exported to the United States, at the Exotic Fauna zoo in Managua, on June 27, 2022
Necrobotics
According to ScienceAlert, spider legs are able to gently and securely grasp huge, delicate, and asymmetrically shaped objects without damaging them. Hence, Yap and her coworkers at Rice University developed a method to make a dead wolf spider's legs unfold and grab onto objects in partnership with mechanical engineer Daniel Preston.
They named this new branch of robotics "necrobotics."
Interestingly, spider legs are not extended by muscles but rather by hydraulic pressure. ScienceAlert explained that when the prosoma chamber, also known as the cephalothorax, contracts, inner body fluid is forced into the legs, causing them to lengthen.
The team had to insert a needle into the spider's prosoma chamber and then use a dab of superglue to seal the needle's tip. The spider's legs may be made fully mobile in less than a second by simply inflating the syringe with a small puff of air.
The scientists got the dead spider to grasp a tiny ball, and they used that experiment to calculate the highest grip force, which was 0.35 millinewtons.
After that, they performed a demonstration in which a dead spider was used to pick up fragile items and electronics, removing a jumper wire from an electric breadboard and moving a block of polyurethane foam afterward.
Additionally, they demonstrated that the spider could support the weight of another spider of the same size.
Read also: Rogue Robot? Chess-Playing Robot Harms 7-Year-Old Child During Match
Future Uses Of These Dead Spiders
When the spiders pass away, the hydraulic system stops functioning in the cephalothorax. The spider curls up when the flexor muscles in its legs develop into rigor mortis because they can only move in one direction, according to ScienceAlert.
Preston stated in the video that one of the uses the team foresees for this invention is micro-manipulation, which may apply to objects like micro-electronic devices.
Since spiders can be biodegraded, utilizing them as robot components would reduce waste in the robotics industry.
However, the dead spider gripper has a striking downside because, after two days or 1,000 open-and-close cycles, it begins to show signs of wear and tear.
But Preston said that this problem could be resolved by applying polymeric coatings.
When the wolf spiders were coated in beeswax, the researchers found that over 10 days, their mass decreased 17 times less than the uncoated spider, indicating that the beeswax increased water retention and prolonged hydraulic system function.
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Written by Joaquin Victor Tacla
