Inside the 20-Metre Robot That Carried Take That
The 20-Metre Robot That Had to Carry the Band
On 4 June 2011 in Manchester, Take That reached one of the most technically dangerous-looking moments in Progress Live. Mark Owen and Howard Donald were standing on the palms of a giant mechanical figure called OM. Then the machine stopped. The performers were left stranded above the stage. Owen was eventually brought down by ladder; Donald remained aloft long enough to sing “Never Forget” before the situation was resolved.
The incident became a very public reminder of what the production team had attempted: Take That had not commissioned a large stage prop. They had built a 20-metre-class moving machine capable of carrying human beings. And that was only one part of the stage.
Before OM Moved, Another Giant Was Already Watching
Progress Live opened at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light on 27 May 2011, with Robbie Williams reunited with Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Jason Orange and Mark Owen on tour for the first time in 15 years. The band’s official history says 1.34 million tickets were sold in less than 24 hours.
Show designer Es Devlin did not place those five performers inside a conventional stadium roof. Instead, the architecture itself became a body. Stageco constructed a 28-metre central tower carrying the head of a colossal scenic figure known as Big Man. Side towers supported its hands as well as PA and video equipment, while a curved structure across the rear completed the impression that a giant human form was wrapping itself around the performance area. The performers were already small. That was intentional.
Two Giants Were Telling Different Stories
It is easy to confuse Big Man and OM because photographs of Progress Live appear to show one enormous humanoid environment. They were fundamentally different pieces of engineering. Big Man was the monumental architectural figure framing the main stage. OM was the articulated mechanical figure that could travel, change posture, move its limbs—and carry performers.
A later architectural study of Devlin’s design describes the fixed scenic figure as approximately 30 metres high and the moving figure as approximately 21 metres high when standing. One turned the stadium into a landscape. The other came alive inside it. That distinction gave the show its dramatic progression. The audience first entered a world inhabited by giants. Then one of them moved.
The Main Stage Had to Split Open
OM did not simply roll on from stage left. Brilliant Stages engineered the central performer stage so it could divide into two sections, allowing the mechanical figure to emerge through it in a seated position. Two band pods could also roll away on tracks and rise vertically on hydraulic scissor lifts.
That means the main stage was not merely supporting the scenic machinery. It was part of the machinery. Floor space had to transform. Band positions had to move. The robot needed a route. Performers still needed safe paths. And all of those systems had to return to precise positions for the next part of the show. A conventional stage floor is architecture. This floor behaved more like an enormous mechanical door.
20 Axes Turned a Sculpture Into a Performer
OM was designed and engineered by Brilliant Stages, working with mechanical engineer Andy Edwards and the wider creative and production team. Its movement required 20 axes according to Brilliant Stages’ published technical account. The figure could move its arms, rotate its wrists, sweep its lower arms horizontally, move its head, alter the position of its legs, sit, recline, rise, and eventually stand with its arms extended.
A separate account in Lighting & Sound International describes the machine as having 19 controlled axes within OM itself—18 hydraulic and one electric—with movement executed to within millimetres. Those descriptions are not necessarily contradictory: Brilliant Stages’ broader system count and LSi’s internal-motion description use slightly different accounting. What matters is the engineering consequence. This was not animation displayed on a screen. Tens of tonnes of physical scenery had to move accurately enough for human performers to interact with it.
The Robot’s Hands Were Stages
OM’s hands were not decorative endpoints. They were performer platforms. During the show, members of Take That could be raised in the palms while additional performers occupied platforms within the robot’s abdomen. That transformed the engineering standard completely. A scenic arm that carries nothing can tolerate one set of design assumptions. A scenic arm carrying a person becomes part of a life-safety system.
The wrist orientation matters. Stopping position matters. Structural deflection matters. Communication matters. Emergency procedures matter. The mechanical choreography must arrive at the same place as the musical choreography. That is why the Manchester failure is so revealing. The machine stopping was inconvenient. A machine continuing to move incorrectly could have been far worse.
The Most Important Button on OM Was Stop
Brilliant Stages incorporated multiple layers of operational safety. Two operators positioned on either side of the track controlled the traction system and the trailer mechanism used to extend OM’s legs. A further operator was located inside the abdomen as a safety spotter, with a manual override available if remote control failed. Emergency-stop controls were distributed through the system and could be activated by operators.
This exposes an important misunderstanding about spectacular automation. The most impressive engineering is not necessarily the ability to make something move. It is the ability to know when it must not move. In front of the audience, OM appeared alive. Backstage, the production needed the exact opposite quality: predictability.
OM Was Built on a Vehicle
The robot’s movement through the stadium required another unusual solution. OM sat on a modified articulated trailer. In show configuration, the trailer could extend to roughly 42 feet, allowing the legs to straighten; it contracted to approximately 29 feet as the figure moved toward a crouched position. The machine travelled away from the main stage along a specially constructed route toward the B-stage.
Brilliant Stages created that route from twenty 8-by-13-foot staging sections. These could collapse toward floor level on parallelogram mechanisms to create the track along which the figure travelled. The audience saw a giant waking up. The engineers saw a mobile chassis, hydraulic systems, articulated joints, tracking tolerances, structural outriggers, power, control, and human payloads.
Then the Robot Stood Up
OM’s full height was deliberately withheld. It did not begin the show standing. It appeared seated. It changed position. It moved. Eventually it travelled toward the B-stage and rose into its full vertical form, opening its arms above the stadium audience.
That sequencing was crucial. If the audience had entered the stadium and immediately seen the robot fully upright, production would have spent one of its largest visual ideas before the show even began. Instead, mechanical capability became dramaturgy. Every additional movement revealed another possibility. The machine had a character arc. Scenic engineering became storytelling.
300 Tonnes of Steel Had to Arrive Before the Robot Could Move
OM may have dominated photographs, but it depended on a much larger structural ecosystem. Stageco says the touring structure contained approximately 300 tonnes of steel. And because the tour had to move quickly between stadiums, Stageco built two complete stage systems. Each required 14 trucks for transport.
This is the part audiences rarely understand when looking at spectacular stage design. The stage does not simply travel. The touring schedule can force the stage to leapfrog itself. While one system is hosting a performance, another can already be moving toward or being constructed at a future venue. That is how architecture keeps pace with a concert tour.
Three Days. Three Cranes. Thirty-Three Reference Points.
The Stageco structure required a complex three-day build using three cranes, its specialist crew augmented by local engineers. But one detail reveals the precision hidden inside that scale. The crews established 33 reference points and used surveying equipment to mark the foundations.
Why? Because multiple scenic and mechanical systems eventually had to meet. Being approximately correct was not enough. Stageco noted that the layout needed millimetre-level accuracy so moving scenic elements could interface properly. A stadium may look enormous. Mechanical tolerances do not become enormous with it. That is one of the paradoxes of large-scale production: the bigger the show becomes, the more important tiny measurements can become.
A 20-Ton Bridge Was Hanging Inside the Picture
Across the stage ran a curved bridge weighing approximately 20 tonnes. Stageco incorporated custom five-metre headers into the structure to support it, while the overall system also had to accept loads from video, lighting, performers and water effects.
The bridge was not merely decoration. Lighting designer Patrick Woodroffe treated it as an essential lighting position. Because Devlin’s scenic design rejected conventional stadium lighting towers, Woodroffe’s team had to find new places from which to illuminate both performers and architecture. He described allowing the set to lead the lighting design rather than forcing the scenery to accommodate a conventional lighting plot. That is a critical production decision. The lighting design did not begin with: where do we want the fixtures? It began with: what architecture has the show created—and how do we make lighting work inside it?
Removing the Lighting Towers Created a New Problem
A stadium lighting tower is useful. It provides height. It provides front-light angles. It can carry followspots. Remove it and the stage picture becomes cleaner—but the lighting department inherits a problem.
Woodroffe’s solution included five Robert Juliat Lancelot followspots on each side in the house and repositioned audience-lighting infrastructure beneath the grandstand roof. Claypaky Alpha Beam 1500 fixtures on side trusses provided key light for action on the B-stage and the front of the main stage. For the DVD recording, the followspot count increased dramatically: operator Dennis Gardener recalled calling 22 followspots. That number demonstrates how film changes concert lighting. The stadium audience needs to see a performer. A camera needs to see the performer’s face consistently enough to survive close-up. Those are related—but not identical—requirements.
Video Had to Fit Surfaces That Were Never Designed Like a Television
The production used video as part of the architecture rather than simply hanging one conventional rectangular screen. Disguise was selected as show-control/media-server technology, with Richard Shipman directing screens. The system’s pixel-mapping workflow allowed content and camera treatment to be prepared for surfaces with different resolutions before the physical set was completely assembled.
TAIT also manufactured frames for XL Video’s S11 panels across the rear of the stage. Those frames supported a particularly theatrical trick: sections could function like saloon doors, allowing Robbie Williams to make an entrance through the video surface. Again, a screen stopped behaving like a screen. It became scenery. Then a doorway. Then video again.
One Type of Winch Did Many Different Jobs
TAIT supplied its then-new T-winch across several effects. The same general winch platform could be used for scenic carts, the tracking bridge, flying Robbie Williams, performer elevators during the flood sequence and lifting running decks.
Standardisation matters enormously on tour. Every unique machine potentially requires different spares, different training, different maintenance procedures, different troubleshooting knowledge. Using a common engineering platform across multiple effects reduces that complexity. The audience sees five different tricks. The touring department would rather maintain one family of machines. That is good touring design.
Even OM Had to Fit Into Transport Mode
Perhaps the most revealing engineering achievement happened after the applause. OM had to become smaller. Much smaller. Brilliant Stages designed the figure so its approximately six-metre-wide articulated shoulders could fold down to about 6.5 feet, while the body contracted into its transport base. The entire figure was engineered around installation, disassembly and road transport rather than simply its appearance during the show.
This is where a spectacular concept either becomes touring production—or fails. A designer can draw a 20-metre robot. An engineer can perhaps build one. But a touring production needs another answer: how does the 20-metre robot get to Munich on time?
The Tour Sold Scale—But Engineering Sold Time
The first Stageco sketches were produced in October 2010. Final structural sign-off came only in January 2011. The first time all of the major suppliers’ elements were assembled together was 21 April—less than a month before the tour opened.
That timeline may be the most frightening number in the entire production. The robot was extraordinary. The giant stage was extraordinary. The bridge, automation, video and flying systems were extraordinary. But none of them existed independently. They had to meet each other. Stageco steel had to meet Total Fabrications’ aluminium structure. TAIT interfaces had to meet the bridge. XL Video had to occupy predetermined locations. Rigging had to coexist with everything above it. OM had to travel through everything below it. A stadium show is therefore not merely the sum of spectacular departments. It is an interface-management problem.
85,291 People Saw the First Wembley Night
On 30 June 2011, Progress Live began its Wembley Stadium run in front of 85,291 spectators. Take That would play eight Wembley nights, exceeding the seven-show run Michael Jackson had staged there during the Bad tour in 1988. Wembley reported that the UK stadium leg would be seen by more than 1.7 million people.
At that scale, OM finally made visual sense. A normal human figure is almost invisible from the upper tiers of a stadium. Make that figure approximately 20 metres tall and the relationship reverses. Take That became miniature performers standing on the body of something much larger than themselves. The stadium itself became part of the scale illusion.
The Robot Failed Once—And That Makes the Design More Interesting
The Manchester malfunction should not be treated as a funny footnote. Nor does it erase what the engineering team achieved. It reveals the genuine difficulty of the production. A scenic video of a robot cannot trap a performer. A projected robot cannot experience hydraulic trouble. A pre-rendered robot always completes its movement perfectly.
OM existed in physical space. That gave it weight. Risk. Mechanical limits. And consequently, dramatic credibility. When it rose, it was not an image of something rising. Thousands of kilograms of machinery were actually moving. That distinction is why audiences still remember it.
Editor’s Take
Progress Live demonstrates the difference between making scenery large and making scenery perform. Big Man transformed the stadium into monumental architecture, but OM went further: it entered, travelled, articulated its limbs, carried human beings and eventually stood above the audience. Behind that theatrical image were hydraulic axes, emergency stops, operators, surveying points, duplicate stage structures, hundreds of tonnes of steel and a transport system engineered before the first spectator arrived. The production lesson is not that bigger scenery creates a bigger show. It is that once scenery moves with people on it, stage design becomes mechanical engineering—and mechanical engineering becomes part of the performance.
References
Wembley Stadium — Take That Back at Wembley for Good
Giant Robot Problems for Take That Concert
The next LIVE STAGE story leaves the giant robot behind for another kind of transformation: Peter Gabriel — Growing Up Live, where the traditional concert floor disappeared beneath a circular stage suspended inside the arena.
