e564 — Saving Drowning People With Spiders

Orange lifebouy ring floating on water — Photo by Zac Taheriyan on Unsplash

Published 10 August 2026

e564 with Michael, Andy and Michael – a spider filled episode with AdTech and lifesaving robotic implications, VR Mario Kart, quantum lawn mowing, identity management and a whole lot more!

Michael, Andy and Michael begin the episode with Spider-Man showing up in an unexpected place – a BMW infotainment system! The negative reactions from the articles and cohosts were not surprising. The team have discussed ads you don’t want showing up where you don’t want them – like on automotive windshields, in AR, and more – see e481 from 2024 in the links below for more on this.

The team shifts to a more enjoyable driving experience, where Andy describes what he did to enable a VR version of Mario Kart. Next up – a reflection on 30 years of Quake with an anniversary release. Then, appealing to the team’s sensibilities on mowing lawns and penchant for NP quantum problems, a lawn mowing optimization game from Pudding.

Switching from software to hardware, the cohosts take a look at a surprising smaller than expected device called the Octopus 16 which measures EEG brain signals to allow the user to control a computer. See the show notes below for the original box for the Emotiv headset from the July 2015 kickstarter.

Then, the titular post for this show, a new robot based on nature for rescuing people who are drowning. The inspiration for this robot was a fishing spider who walks on water to capture its prey. Your show notes thankfully do not include pictures of such spiders, though if you click through to the Arxiv paper, there is a picture, so consider yourself warned. While not discussed in this episode, Dr. Kate Darling’s book The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots explores social and ethical themes on robotics that fit nicely into this theme. Michael M had a chance to hear her speak at Duke earlier this year and an article about that talk is included in the notes below.

Rounding out the show, the team wraps up with an identity service from Meta called Facebook Verified. This free service is intended to help identify when a person is a human and distinguish from AI agents. The cohosts shared thoughts about this topic and the service before the recording time was exhausted.

Aside from spiders, what other robotic form factors based on the animal and insect kingdom would you want to see? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know!