Did anyone predict necrobots in any dystopian future novel? Scientists have taken a step into the bizarre and have bold plans to develop necrotech.
Every day is supposed to be a school day, and this is definitely one of those days. Necrobots. The question that is with me throughout this piece is ‘why would you?’.
Engineers at Rice University in Texas, who obviously hate spiders, have been amusing themselves by killing spiders and turning them into robots – necrobots. They have been pumping air into them to get the legs to unfurl and releasing the air to get them grip small objects. The justification for this was that it could be used in microelectronics, or for capturing small insects to study, but mostly because it amused them. The video that they made is …. different.
In an attempt to make it seem scientific Daniel Preston reported that smaller spiders can lift heavier loads than larger spiders. The joints in the spider legs do fail eventually, after about 1000 uses.
When asked about future developments an excited student in the lab showed me a video of dead spiders doing a dance routine,”this will totally go viral”. When pushed for something more practical they mentioned that they had now got more dexterity with individual leg movements. “One of the issues with spiders is they can’t carry much weight. We are now working with rats. They can carry small cameras and small signal transmitters/receivers so they can be controlled”. Couldn’t live rats work we asked. “It is impossible to get them to go where you want. Additionally these might be going into toxic environments so there’s an ethics issue. Better to kill them and robotize their corpses”.
They then proceeded to share a secret ambition, “Look, don’t tell anyone this, but we have a plan. Imagine a much loved person could be reanimated robotically, combined with one of those AI systems that represents their personality and speech….”. He gazed off into the distance dreaming of being the CEO of some dystopian start up company, while I quietly left.
Photo by Egor Kamelev: https://www.pexels.com/photo/selective-focus-photography-of-spider-1104949/
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