Spider grippers!
Preston Innovation Laboratory/Rice University
Scientists have made dead spiders into grippers.
On July 25th of 2022, scientists reported in Advanced Science that all they had to do to turn deceased wolf spiders into controllable robots is insert a syringe into a spider’s back then superglue it in place. This discovery is the reason for a new field called ‘necrobotics’ for use of biotic materials as robot components. This area of research could be used to create biodegradable grippers for very small objects. The research started in 2019 after Daniel Presten, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Rice University established his testing lab.
This discovery was born from a simple question, explained Faye Yap, a mechanical engineer at Rice University, “Why do spiders curl up when they die?”
The answer? Spiders control their legs’ extension by forcing blood into them; but a dead spider no longer has blood pressure, so they curl up; they use a system of hydraulic pressure to control their limbs. This is because spiders do not have antagonistic muscle pairs such as biceps or triceps in humans, Yap explained in a university statement.
Yap’s team first tried putting dead wolf spiders into a double boiler - 2 pots using steam from hot water to heat things up - in hopes that the steam would make the spiders expand, therefore moving their legs, but were unsuccessful. They then tried sticking the needle straight into the internal valves of their hydraulic chamber, leading them to discover that by doing this, they could control the spiders’ grip well enough to pull wires from circuit boards, also to pick up other spiders, all just by puffing air in and out through the syringe. The dead spiders were able to pick up more than 130 percent of their own weight, lasting through 1000 open-close cycles.
Yap says that the next step will be to control the spiders’ legs individually, and in the process, they could figure out more on how spiders work.
A bioengineer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who wasn’t involved in the study, Rahid Bashir, says that a spider corpse would have its own set of problems as a robot, as it will not perform consistently like ‘hard robots’; as its body will break down over time. But they can definitely offer lessons to engineers, as there is a lot to learn from nature.
Yap wonders whether it’s okay to play Frankenstein, as no one talks about ethics when it comes to researching. Bashir agrees with this statement, saying scientists need to figure out the morality of this sort of bioengineering before they get too good at it, but it would be interesting; and so the question is, ‘How far do you go?’
APA Bibliography
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dead-wolf-spiders-robots-necrobots#:~:text=Scientists%20have%20literally%20reanimated%20dead,and%20superglue%20it%20in%20place.
https://www.webstaurantstore.com/blog/2406/what-is-a-double-boiler.html
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-use-dead-spiders-to-grip-objects-180980498/#:~:text=In%20a%20paper%20published%20in,grippers%20for%20very%20small%20objects.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-use-dead-spiders-to-grip-objects-180980498/
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/rice-university-dead-spider-necrobots-17348508.php
