Arachnophobes now look away; Engineers have found a way to turn dead spiders from your nightmares into mechanical grab robots.
Researchers at Rice University in Texas pumped wolf spider carcasses with air to unfold their legs and cling to objects.
They discovered that the arachnids could lift 130 percent of their own body weight and manipulate a printed circuit board.
It is hoped that the delicate gripper could be used in microelectronics, or that its natural camouflage could help capture small insects for study.
Daniel Preston, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, said, “The thing is, after the spider dies, it’s the perfect architecture for small-scale, naturally derived grippers.
“It’s something that hasn’t been used before, but has a lot of potential.”
Rice University mechanical engineers have found a way to convert the bodies of dead spiders into necrobotic grippers. Pictured is a grab used to lift a jumper and break a circuit to turn off an LED. The team hopes the gripper could be useful in microelectronics
Rice University’s mechanical engineers were inspired after they encountered coiled spiders while moving things around in their lab. Lead author Faye Yap (pictured) wanted to know why the arachnids’ legs curl inward after they die
The mechanical engineers at the Houston-based institute were inspired after they encountered coiled spiders while moving things around in their lab.
Lead author Faye Yap wanted to know why spiders’ legs curl inward after death.
She said: Spiders don’t have antagonistic pairs of muscles, like biceps and triceps in humans
“They only have flexors, which allow their legs to curl inward, and they extend them outward by hydraulic pressure.”
Internal valves in the spiders’ hydraulic chamber, or prosoma, direct blood to their limbs, forcing them to stretch, and when that pressure is relieved, they contract.
Yap added: “When they die, they lose the ability to actively pressure their bodies. That’s why they curl up.
“At the time we thought, ‘Oh, this is super interesting,’ we wanted to find a way to exploit this mechanism.”
The valves allow the spider to control each leg individually, and were used by the researchers to move all legs simultaneously.
Engineers first tapped a needle into the spider’s prosoma chamber and secured it with a bit of superglue. The other end of the needle was connected to one of the lab’s test rigs or a hand syringe, which delivered a minute amount of air to activate the legs almost instantly.
Left: A scanning electron micrograph of the joint membrane of a spider’s patellofemoral joint, which inspired the design of many soft flexible joints. Right: A hypodermic needle is inserted into the spider’s prosoma and sealed with glue
In a paper published yesterday in Advanced Sciencethe team describes how they made the ‘necrobot’.
They first tapped the prosoma chamber with a needle and attached it with a bit of superglue.
The other end of the needle was connected to one of the lab’s test rigs or a hand syringe, which delivered a minute amount of air to activate the legs almost instantly.
The engineers let the grippers manipulate a printed circuit board, move objects and even lift another spider.
They also proved to be fairly robust, as they could go through 1,000 open-close cycles before showing wear.
preston said: ‘We think it has to do with problems with dehydration of the joints. We think we can overcome this by applying polymeric coatings.’
Daniel Preston (left) and Faye Yap (right) hope their spider grabber will open the door to a new field of robotics they call “necrobotics,” which will have real-world applications
The team hopes their spider grabber will open the door to a new field of robotics they call “necrobotics,” which will have real-world applications.
Preston said, “There are a lot of pick-and-place tasks that we can look at, repetitive tasks like sorting or moving objects on this small scale, and maybe even things like assembling microelectronics.”
Yap added: ‘Another application could be to use it to capture smaller insects in nature, as it is naturally camouflaged.’
The spiders themselves are also biodegradable, so their necrobots don’t introduce a large waste stream as with more traditional components and materials.
Future research will involve making similar grippers with smaller spiders, which can carry heavier loads compared to their body weight.