Corpse of a dead spider turned into a robot using 'Necrobotics'

The corpse of a dead spider has been turned into a robot using ‘Necrobotics‘.

Scientists from Rice University have used dead wolf spiders to create a whole new type of robotics.

You know how spiders curl up when they die?

Well, it turns out that this can be harnessed for our convenience, as much as it may give us the creeps.

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How ‘Necrobotics’ is turning dead spiders into robots

The necrobots featured in a 2022 paper published in Advanced Science, in which videos show dead wolf spider necrobots being put to work.

In the clips, one spider is used to disrupt an electrical circuit, and another is used to pick up an object.

In fact, one usage was to pick up another dead spider.

You may ask why spiders are being used in this fashion, beyond the fact that it generates headlines and grabs people’s attention.

Well, unlike animals that use muscles, spiders rely on hydraulic pressure to control each of their eight legs.

For the non-biology experts among us, here’s a quick breakdown of what that means.

Inside the spider, a specialized structure called the prosoma chamber channels bodily fluids into the limbs, extending them.

When the fluid volume decreases, the legs will pull inwards to their clawed position.

Hence why spiders retract into that state upon death.

“It happens to be the case that the spider, after it’s deceased, is the perfect architecture for small-scale, naturally derived grippers,” Daniel Preston, from Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering, said.

With the use of a needle and some superglue, the researchers created a seal in the prosoma chamber, IFL Science reported.

Through this seal, they injected air into the arachnid’s limbs, causing them to inflate and unfurl.

When the air pressure was reduced, the legs closed back up, creating a gripper.

These unorthodox grippers reportedly lasted around 1,000 trials before they began to crumble.

Preston suggested that these grippers could come in handy in pick-and-place tasks, such as assembling microelectronics.

Funnily enough, this isn’t the first time that insects have played a role in science – researchers in China are developing tiny robots inspired by ants and beetles.

Through ‘Necrobotics’, these spiders could even be capable of carrying out rescue missions in the future.

Scientists are always coming up with interesting creations

There’s no shortage of new inventions coming out of scientists’ hard work and research these days.

Over in Hong Kong, a soft ‘e-skin’ has been developed which could make giving hugs over the internet a reality.

And who could forget the robotic legs that you can hire out for hiking?

It seems like scientists are always coming up with inventive ways of addressing our day-to-day problems.

But whether or not ‘Necrobotics’ will catch on remains to be seen.

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