The next best thing (Image: Alamy)

FOR Peter Parker, it was a tingling sensation that alerted him to an imminent threat. Now anyone can pretend to be Spider-Man by simply donning a suit that lets you feel how close you are to a nearby object. It can even let the wearer navigate with their eyes closed.

The suit, called SpiderSense and built by Victor Mateevitsi of the University of Illinois in Chicago has small robotic arms packaged in modules with microphones that send out and pick up ultrasonic reflections from objects. When the ultrasound detects someone moving closer to the microphone, the arms respond by exerting a growing pressure on the body. Seven of these modules are distributed across the suit to give the wearer as near to 360 degree ultrasound coverage as possible.

“When someone is punching Spider-Man, he feels the sensation and can avoid it. Our suit is the same concept,” says Mateevitsi. SpiderSense could help blind people to find their way more easily, he says.


Mateevitsi tested the suit out on students, getting them to stand outside on campus, blindfolded, and “feel” for approaching attackers. Each wearer had ninja cardboard throwing stars to use whenever they sensed someone approaching them. “Ninety five per cent of the time they were able to sense someone approaching and throw the star at them,” says Mateevitsi.

“I’m very excited about this,” says Gershon Dublon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who also works on augmenting parts of the human body. Mateevitsi’s work is a step on the road to giving humans truly integrated extrasensory perception, says Dublon.

Mateevitsi wants to use the suit, or just a few sensors on the arms and back, to boost cyclists’ awareness of other traffic on the road. SpiderSense is due to be presented at the Augmented Human conference in Stuttgart, Germany, in March. The team now plans to add more sensors to the suit to increase its resolution.

The SpiderSense suit could boost cyclists’ awareness of other vehicles on the road

“We humans have the senses that we are born with and we can’t extend them,” Mateevisti says. “But there are some threats which are very deadly, but we can’t sense them, like radiation. Electronic sensors can feel those threats.”

The team also plans to begin trials of SpiderSense with visually impaired people.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Back off, my Spidey senses tell me you’re too close”