A team of researchers from the Institute of Infocomm Research (I2R) and the National University of Singapore are pooling their combined expertise in wireless communications, robotics and advanced sensors technologies to develop mobile robot spiders that can communicate with each other and work together as a team.

Called the Tarantula project, this project has been going on for over two years.

Google, Spider info trawl, June 2005

(Oh Dear!)

The chat room

Ok, tell me, but first I want to know how many Spider-man films you’ve seen?

Have you got a collection of Spider-man DVDs maybe?

How predictable you are

Answer the question

None and no I haven’t

Have you ever seen a Spider-man movie, or even read articles about the films, or read comics or any material about this character?

Yes I know, I know, I know where you want me to go. This is transfer, pure and straight, right? And better a fictional character than a real one, yes?

So, Spider-man’s a fictional character?

Oh for God’s sake, who doesn’t know about Spider-man? I’ve read about him of course but it’s kid’s stuff compared to what’s happening here.

OK, now tell me about it.

Here it is then, but I doubt if you’ll believe it, anymore than you believe anything I tell you.

You will say, I know, that finally my mind has contrived to divide the real from the unreal and that my self (whatever that is you would no doubt ask) has chosen the path of the latter instead of floating in between. Or maybe you wouldn’t.

Anyway, follow this…

It’s 11 pm.

It’s the bathroom.

And I’m scared if not petrified.

My PC battery’s shot so I’ve plugged it into the shaving socket and have run a phone line in from my studio across the outside wall and I’m chilled to the bone because it’s dark and cold outside and in doing so I’ve had to run the gauntlet of the various obstructions which festoon this wall i.e. bamboo plants which remain uncut on account of laziness to do so, a satellite dish which currently serves as a snow collector and an assortment of plastic tubes awaiting a job the memory and purposes of which have longed since absented themselves from my mind.

My poor mind.  Squeezed, stretched, exhausted, but alert, wide-awake, you bet!

Anyway, outside it’s almost totally black but it’s an eerie sort of darkness and snow is faintly brushing against the bathroom window with soft feathery sounds and building up in little pockets at the corners of the glass outside.

There’s a full moon tonight, although you’d never know it in this density of darkness, but nonetheless I can still make out the shapes of neighbour’s houses in the shadow less light, which emanates from the snow itself.

So I’m feeling dreamy but expectant.

And I’m waiting…

In the bathroom with my laptop on my lap...

Internet ready.
For spiders...

Ed and Frances

We were only teasing!

The words jump up on the screen and shock me out of this sleepy state I’ve drifted into.

Teasing about what? The thought runs across my mind.

About biting you, the double dose.

And I’m thinking ‘this scares me’, especially the bit about the double bite.

It was Frances’ idea by way of a joke but she’s kindly sort really and wouldn’t hurt a fly you know. Well. No. Actually that isn’t true… she would hurt a fly but only with the intention of eating it. But she wouldn’t hurt you, or eat you - would you Frances?

No, he’s too big.

A sharp sting on my left ankle shoots up my spine and leaves me breathless with bright white flashes of light pulsing at the edge of my right eye.

Now don’t panic, Frances didn’t bite you, she just infused you with a substance, that’s all.

She what?

It’ll stop you talking which won’t be a bad thing at all. Because then we can really begin to communicate, can’t we Simon?

My mouth in fact has clammed rigid although my lips are slightly apart allowing me to breathe and their words, these words, if they indeed were words, come from everywhere and nowhere.

Talk without talking. Point your thoughts to us.

To you or Frances?

One and the same. Well done though Simon! You’ll be a bit creaky for a while but you picked it up real good!

And this was our first real meeting.

Real because I could no longer doubt their existence as intelligent beings that desired to communicate with me.

Don’t ask me exactly how we communicated; maybe it was via the Internet or simply that the connection allowed us to talk in some telepathic way. I don’t know, don’t know, I’ve yet to understand this.

We chatted about all and everything that had happened over the past two years. All the tricks and games they’d played with me. There were times when I lost concentration and when my thoughts became less directed at them but they quickly brought me back with what were like electric shocks to my brain, the sort of shock you get from an electric fence; sharp but not enough to hurt.

I realised afterwards that this was simply a first lesson in communication with them and that it would be by no means the last before I really got the hang of things; and that before any meaning or significant message could get through, I first had to grasp their medium; to find the way to immerse myself in it.

So, finally, I just relaxed and let my jaw go loose and directed a thought.

About time we got down to the nitty-gritty

So, OK you two, please put me in the picture, what’s this all about?

You’re going to help us that’s all.

Help you do what?

Evolve, that’s what.

Evolve? Oh interesting!

Yes very, but now you must sleep this first session off, it’s hard on you, this first trial.

Trial?

Tomorrow we will begin to explain, after we have taken over Google.

You what?

It’s Ed’s joke. Sleep now, Simon.

And I did, a dreamless sixteen hours.

So this is how it went and, don’t you see? They’ve been building up to this all this time.

And I’ve been used, there’s no other way of putting it.

Used.  What a stupid word. Better to say I’m involved, part of something, part of some process, which probably, if I am to believe E&F, is the most fundamental one since man/ape stood up on two legs and liked it and thought “This could be good, I’ll get the others to give it a try”.

Help me out on this.

You know, I reckon the last two years were a sort of build up. They were playing around with my head. Or they were softening me up maybe, I don’t know. Or maybe they were just limbering up, or even waiting for the right time, waiting like they have for millions of years, for us to be ready for them. Hell! You remember those articles I sent you? The ones about putting spider DNA in goats to improve their milk? And then the mouse that’s DNA they’d made human (but don’t worry folks, it’s really only a mouse?) So they can make a human with mouse DNA right? And make a human with spider DNA, and/or visa versa, are you getting this? Hell! And do you remember those pictures with a mouse with a human ear growing from its back, I mean, what sort of hearing must it have had?

Whoa! Now it’s beginning to figure.

OK, I’ll shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up. I’ll cool it. I’m saying nothing more until I hear from you, I promise.

But not now, not now. I’m too too tired.

And OK I know what you are thinking. But put it aside, please.

Just go with me for once.

See it as real, because I have no choice now.

I’m caught in their web.

And I’m so tired.

I need to sleep again.

Signing off.

Oh, by the way, the Spider-man stories?

Written by a tarantula.

OK goodnight Simon.

Goodnight Simon, our friend Simon.