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SpiderHarp is a Spider Web-Inspired Musical Instrument
While studying how spiders utilize web vibrations Oregon State University researchers built SpiderHarp, a device that replicates web vibrations into musical notes audible to humans.
Dr. Ross Hatton, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics at Oregon State University (OSU) and his graduate student, Andrew Otto collaborated with biologists at the University of California, Berkeley (who study real-life spiders) to construct this large-scale model and robot spider in hopes of revealing the mechanisms that the real-life counterparts in nature use to detect activity on their web through vibrations. Dr. Chet Udell, Assistant Professor of Biological and Ecological Engineering, electronic instrument builder, and musician heard about the robot spider on NPR. Hatton and Udell randomly met at a research mixer event where the idea to transform this web into a highly expressive musical instrument became a formal collaboration.
Read more from SpiderHarp, OPB and see more from Oregon Public Broadcasting on YouTube
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