With candy striped legs the creature comes
Moving softly through the shadow of the evening sun
Stealing past the windows of the blissfully dead
Looking for the victim shivering in bed
Searching out fear in the gathering gloom
Suddenly a movement at the top of the room
And there is nothing I can do as I realize with fright
The spider is having me for dinner tonight

Adapted from : The Lullaby by The Cure

The hunting spider is a kinetic sculpture designed to help those afflicted with arachnophobia. It is well known that overexposure to a certain stimuli desensitizes us to it.  The spider just needs to be dropped on an unsuspecting arachnophobe a few times and before they know it, they will be over their fear.

The spider is constructed using laser-cut 6mm plywood, the legs are attached to the body via a friction fit. The release mechanism is a servo arm that moves down when the button is pressed. The one drawback of this design is that it requires manual resetting. So a keep a chair handy if you want to help multiple arachnophobes.

 

 

You can find the SolidWorks file for the legs and body here.

Arduino Code

#include Servo; 

#define RESET_TRIGGER 60
#define DROP 180
#define DELAY_TIME 1000

const int SERVO_PIN = 9;
const int sensorPin = 0;
Servo svo;

void setup(void)
{
  svo.attach(SERVO_PIN);
  pinMode(sensorPin, INPUT);
}

void loop(void)
{
  svo.write(RESET_TRIGGER);
  delay(DELAY_TIME);
  bool val= true;
  while(val)
  {
    val = digitalRead(sensorPin);
  }

  svo.write(DROP);
  delay(DELAY_TIME);
}