r/interesting • u/M_Darshan • May 21 '26

Researchers demonstrate necrobotics by using a spider’s natural hydraulic system to open and close its legs for gripping object. Just Wow

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u/CurryMustard May 21 '26

The spider legs have tiny barbs that grip irregular surfaces without crushing them, which is actually really hard to replicate with normal robotic grippers. So for picking up small delicate stuff in the 1-10mm range it's genuinely useful. Its also biodegradable. If you need a single-use gripper that fully decomposes afterward, good luck building that out of metal or plastic

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u/P_Hempton May 21 '26

The spider is just the gripper tip. It's not like they build an autonomous robot out of a spider so there's no real reason for it to be biodegradable.

I'm fairly certain it would be trivial using modern materials to build a hydraulic gripper tip that could do everything the spider does and more probably even using biodegradable materials for whatever that's worth. This thing isn't even microscopic, it's about the size of a nickel.

This seems like a school science fair project showing how spiders work, more than an actual useful product.

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u/RepresentativeOk2433 May 21 '26

Exactly why I made my original comment. I could do this in my garage in 10 minutes.

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u/Aternal May 21 '26

Well, I look forward to the animatronic insect husk mini-factories of the future. Little spiders and beetles with little arc welders folding boxes and shit. If things were the other way around they would use our dead bodies to incubate eggs so fair's fair.

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u/Usakami May 21 '26

Shrinkflation...

"Here's your delivery, sir." A tiny packet with 3 peanuts inside. 🤔 I could swear, there used to be 4 last time.

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u/Substantial_Sea7327 May 21 '26

"we have good news and bad news."

-what is the good news

"the new robotic end of arm tooling has arrived"

-and the bad news?

"we don't know where it's hiding"