He told CNN that listening to music as you move through the VR spider allows you to see and hear these structural changes and gives you a better idea of how spiders see the world.
“Spiders have very harsh vibrational sensors, they use vibrations as a way to orient themselves, to communicate with other spiders and so the idea of literally thinking like a spider would experience the world was something that was very obvious to us as humans. science about spider stuff, ”Buehler said.
Spiders can build their sails without scaffolding or supports, so a better idea of how they work could lead to the development of new advanced 3D printing techniques, he said.
They scanned the canvas as the spider built it, and Buehler compared it to a stringed instrument that changes as the structure becomes more complex.
“As you play the guitar, you’ll suddenly need new strings to appear, to appear and grow,” he said.
Buehler said they recorded the vibrations that spiders create during various activities, such as building a network, yard signals and communicating with other spiders, and used artificial intelligence to create synthetic versions.
“We’re probably starting to be able to speak the language of a spider,” he said. “The hope is that we will then be able to return this data to the structure of the network to increase the ability to communicate with the spider and probably cause the spider to act in a certain way, to respond to signals in a certain way.
He said work was still ongoing and they had to close their lab due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In addition to the scientific value, Buehler said that the networks are interesting from a musical point of view and that you can hear the songs that the spider creates during construction.
“It’s unusual, weird and scary, but ultimately beautiful,” he said.
“The reason I did this is because I wanted to be able to really transfer information from the perspective of the spider, which is very atonal, weird and scary, if you will, to something that is more human,” Buehler said.