You'd be forgiven for dismissing jumping spiders as pests, or at best the subject of an amusing macro shot. But it turns out that these tiny arachnids, with brains no bigger than a poppy seed, have been quietly solving one of the trickiest problems in imaging for millions of years: how to judge depth accurately and efficiently. Now, engineers at Northwestern University in Illinois have taken note.
The resulting device, called SpiderCam, is a 3D depth-sensing camera that produces real-time depth maps while consuming less than a watt of power. That's less energy than the nightlight on your landing. For photographers and camera engineers accustomed to thinking about power budgets in terms of battery life per shoot or drone flight time, that number is pretty striking.
