By listening to the music as you move through the VR spider web, you can see and hear these structural changes and get a better idea of how spiders see the world, he told CNN.
“Spiders have very sharp vibration sensors, they use vibrations as a way to orient themselves, to communicate with other spiders and so the idea of literally thinking as a spider would experience the world was something that was very clear to us as scientists. spider material, “” said Buehler.
Spiders can build their web without scaffolding or supports, so a better idea of how they work could lead to the development of advanced new 3D printing techniques, he said.
They scanned the web while the spider was building it, and Buehler compared it to a stringed instrument that changes as the structure gets more complex.
“As you play guitar, new strings will suddenly appear and emerge and grow,” he said.
Buehler said they have recorded the vibrations spiders cause during various activities, such as building a web, courtship cues, and communication with other spiders, and that they use artificial intelligence to create synthetic versions.
“We may be starting to speak the language of a spider,” he said. “The hope is that we can then play it on the web structure to improve the ability to communicate with the spider and perhaps get the spider to act in a certain way, to respond to the signals in a certain way. “
He said work is still ongoing and they had to close their lab due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In addition to the scientific value, Buehler said the webs are musically interesting and you can hear the melodies the spider makes during construction.
“It’s unusual and creepy and scary, but ultimately beautiful,” he said.
“The reason I did that is that I really wanted to be able to transfer information from the spider perspective, which is very atonal and weird and ghostly, into something more human,” Buehler said.