Никогда не догадаетесь, что заставило меня выбрать эту статью для сегодняшнего #tuesday_reading
На днях я наблюдала целый Animal planet на балконе, когда маленький, живущий там, паук охотился на букашку, выслеживал, а потом вдруг резко прыгнул, схватил, начал есть, а потом упрыгал с ней в зубах. Надеюсь, роботы из сегодняшней статьи не будут делать так с людьми...

Scientists taught a spider how to jump so they can one day do the same for robots

We know spiders best as quiet, eight-legged monsters who lurk around and trap their prey with webs and venom. But 13 percent of the more than 450,000 arachnid species can aggressively stalk prey and lunge at them with a jump attack.

The way these spiders jump is worth studying. They can leap six times the distance of their body length from a standing start, and carry five times their weight into the air. Translating these physiological wonders into engineering strategies could revolutionize the type of robots we build and deploy.

A team of researchers in the UK ran a study that trained a regal jumping spider named Kim to jump across various distances of a platformed obstacle course, all while ultra-high-speed videos took footage of the leaps.

Longer jumps used steeper takeoff angles to optimize flight time and allow the spider to travel a greater distance, but also minimized the amount of energy exerted.

“The key thing we had hoped to identify with this study, was whether this species used hydraulics in addition to muscles to power its jumps.”

“Unfortunately we weren't able to clarify this for sure. Hydraulic force created by the haeolymph might give a boost to the spider as it jumps, but it’s not an essential feature. We hope that future studies may shed light on this a little further.”

If the jumping physics could be replicated in a flying or jumping robot, it could help solve a lot of biomechanical constraints keeping most robots on the ground—namely, the balancing act between keeping a robot light and giving it enough power to leap large distances into the air—and maybe lead to a new era of microrobots

NEW WORDS:
🔬lurk around – скрываться в засаде
🔬trap – ловушка
🔬prey – жертва, добыча
🔬venom - яд
🔬arachnid - представитель класса паукообразных
🔬lunge - прыжок вперёд
🔬deploy - применять, запускать
🔬obstacle - препятствие, помеха
🔬exert - проявлять, производить
🔬hydraulics - гидравлика
🔬shed light on - проливать свет

https://www.popsci.com/jumping-spiders-muscles#page-3