Electronic Dance Music (EDM) has evolved into a $7.1 billion industry, with most of this revenue coming from live shows and events. One of these events is Ultra Miami, which was voted the #1 Festival in the World by DJ MAG. UK-based Arcadia Spectacular has brought their flagship stage, the Arcadia Spider, to Ultra for the past 3 years. It was while some group members were attending Ultra in March 2017 that the idea to work with Arcadia Spectacular for a Senior Design Project was born. After reaching out through their website, directors Pip Rush Jansen and Bertie Cole expressed interest in an addition to the Spider that would interact with the crowd underneath the centrally located DJ booth.

After brainstorming with Bertie, the concept of a semi-autonomous tele-operated robotic hub came to fruition; it was dubbed the Arcadia Spider Robotic Hub (ASRH). We envision full scale features of such an addition to include: (1) laser/light show (2) CO2/Cryo Blaster (3) onboard camera. The lasers/lights and CO2/Cryo are typical special effects at EDM shows, while the onboard camera is used to tele-operate the robot, capture live feed of the dance floor, and leave the door open for computer vision capabilities for the semi-autonomous ASRH.

Because of the logistical challenges of working with a company from overseas and overall complexity of this undertaking, the goal of this project is not to make a stand-alone device to be added directly to the Spider. Instead, the goal of this project is to produce a proof-of-concept prototype that confirms the viability of the design for full-scale implementation. Essentially, all the key computer/electrical engineering design principles for such a device are demonstrated, but with less expensive parts and hardware more accessible to us. For example, instead of using a real CO2/cryo blaster, the use of a Nerf SecretStrike is employed to represent what would be a CO2/cryo blaster on a full-scale version.