{"id":238559,"date":"2026-06-07T18:04:44","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T23:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/jumping-spiders-inspire-ultra-efficient-3d-camera"},"modified":"2026-06-07T18:04:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T23:04:44","slug":"jumping-spiders-inspire-ultra-efficient-3d-camera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/jumping-spiders-inspire-ultra-efficient-3d-camera","title":{"rendered":"Jumping spiders inspire ultra-efficient 3D camera"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/jumping-spiders-inspire-ultra-efficient-3d-camera.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This 3D camera estimates depth by comparing blur across two differently focused images of the same scene. The prototype generates real-time 3D maps while using less than a watt of power, sidestepping more energy-intensive approaches.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>By borrowing a trick from tiny jumping spiders, Northwestern University engineers have developed an extremely energy-efficient 3D camera. Called SpiderCam, the new device senses depth the same way that jumping spiders judge distances before making a high-precision hop. To estimate depth, the system captures two images of the same scene with slightly different focus settings and measures subtle differences in blurriness between the two images.<\/p>\n<p>With this strategy, the camera produces real-time 3D maps while consuming less than a watt of power. That\u2019s less energy than used by a standard nightlight.<\/p>\n<p>The innovation could enable a new generation of battery-powered devices that need to gauge their surroundings, like wearable technologies, assistive devices, robots and drones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This 3D camera estimates depth by comparing blur across two differently focused images of the same scene. The prototype generates real-time 3D maps while using less than a watt of power, sidestepping more energy-intensive approaches. By borrowing a trick from tiny jumping spiders, Northwestern University engineers have developed an extremely energy-efficient 3D camera. Called SpiderCam, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1488,1965,6,1977],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drones","category-mapping","category-robotics-ai","category-wearables"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}