Year: 2015   Location: Glastonbury, UK

For Arcadia Spectacular’s 2015 Glastonbury show “Metamorphosis”. The task was the design and engineering of three 16ft long mechanical spiders. To crawl along a cable 30ft above the crowd, carrying two people, lights, fireworks, flamethrowers and a Zorb ball. All while weighing less than 100kg.

The show was initially staged at Glastonbury in the summer of 2015, before embarking on an international tour. The Spiders now being part of their own show "Genesis".

Background

Starting life as a Lego proof-of-concept mechanism. Further scale prototypes were made and simulations were done to find a crank and linkage design to correctly convey the sensation of a spider crawling along a web.

All design decisions were influenced by the strict weight and safety constraints. With the whole stucture being built from light weight materials. Using a crank and linkage method allowed all eight legs to be driven from a single actuator. This actuator also being utilised to proppel the spider along the wire.