Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

The dawn of the necrobotic age

Some technological advances spring from natural inspiration. We can look to flora, fauna, and the inanimate world for all kinds of ideas.

It was only inevitable that some mad robot scientists decided to imitate spiders.

Turning dead spiders into mechanical grippers may be some people's idea of a nightmare scenario, but it could have tangible benefits. Spider legs can grip large, delicate, and irregularly shaped objects firmly and softly without breaking them. 

So, in collaboration with mechanical engineer Daniel Preston, Yap and her colleagues at Rice University discovered a way to make a dead wolf spider's legs unfurl and grip onto objects.

 

To try out the idea, the team modified dead spiders to grab each other.

Naturally, "[t]hey called this new type of robotics 'necrobotics'."

A sinkhole claims a human victim

A man perished in a sinkhole, seemingly continuing Gaia's earthly war against humanity.

The event took place in Israel, and involved a sinkhole opening up within a swimming pool:

Mobile phone video from the scene shows floaties and water being sucked to the bottom, at the center of the pool, as people sitting by the poolside shout in Hebrew. A man is seen approaching the sinkhole, slips and is almost pulled in before he backs away.

A dreadful way to die.

(thanks to Steven "No Floaties" Kaye)