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Kinesys - Projects - Robbie
Williams 'Weekends of Mass Distraction' European Tour
 Anyone who might have
thought that they had seen it all as far as moving video screens were
concerned might find themselves revising their opinions once they had
observed the latest incarnation from the imagination of Mark Fisher.
For Robbie Williams' "Weekends of Mass Distraction" tour the
concept has been taken and twisted, literally, to provide something new
again.
Eight huge columns
of LED video screen form the focal centre-piece of the show. To
complement the video footage, especially created for the show by BDH
for creative director Lee Lodge, each of the screens was built to be
able to move in 3 different directions; horizontally around an oval
'race-track', vertically by means of one or two chain motors depending
on screen size and finally by rotating around the vertical axis to
allow the video to face the audience at all times irrespective of their
position on the race-track. The rotate mechanism also allowed the
audience to see the 98 Vari-lites which adorned the back of the
screens.
 Celebrated rock and roll
set builders Brilliant Stages managed the mechanical aspects of this
mammoth undertaking while Kinesys provided the control products and
expertise required to drive the complex combination of steel and
aluminium supporting the screens.
5kW ac servo
motors connected to Velocity drives were used to drive 8 custom built
'tugs' around a specially fabricated track made of steel I-Beam with a
carefully formed rack welded to its underside. A pinion attached to the
motor/gearbox combination engaged with the rack to provide a positive
mechanical drive system. The resultant system had a maximum speed of
over 500 mm/s.
 Specially converted Model
LL Lodestar chain hoists lifted the screens up and down. The conversion
to fully variable speed chain hoists involved fitting dual, silent, dc
brakes, new limit switches and an encoder. A single channel Elevation
1+ controller sat next to the hoist on the tug and allowed it to be run
to any position within a millimetre and at any speed up to and even
slightly over the hoist's original fixed speed. The Elevation 1+
received all its commands, via a data lead daisy chained through all
the controllers, from the control computer on the floor. This meant
that just just two data streams could control all fourteen hoists, in
fact the only reason two cables were used and not one was due to the
two festoon systems that supplied the stage right and stage left
screens independently.
Finally the
integrated position controller within the Velocity drive provided the
custom logic required to control the dc motor and gearbox used in the
fixed speed rotate mechanisms. Limit switches provided positional
feedback allowing the system to rotate between 0, 90 and 180 degrees.
All 30 axes of
automation came under the control of Kinesys' Vector software, the
timing and delay features proving crucial to allowing everything to
move simultaneously while ensuring that collision between tugs and
screens were avoided.
A variety of other
interface and utility modules from Kinesys ensured that the 'behind the
scenes' aspects of the system: emergency stop monitoring, communication
network and power distribution worked effectively and reliably
providing a highly tourable and reliable system which proved a hit with
both the crowds and the crew.
Robbie Williams
"Weekends of Mass Distraction" Tour Credits
Date: June 2003 - August 2003
Venue: Europe
Set Design: Mark Fisher
Set Construction: Brilliant Stages
Creative Director: Lee Lodge
Video Supplier: XL Video via Blink TV
Video Content: Burrell Durrant Hifle
Video Screens - Tracking (x8)
5kW servo motor and Velocity drive
Travel: 22m
Max Speed: 590 mm/s
Video Screen - Lifting (x14)
Lodestar Elevation Model LL and Elevation 1+ controller
Lifting Capacity: 1 Tonne
Show Travel: 1.8m
Max Speed: 175 mm/s
Video Screen - Rotate (x8)
0.37kW dc motor and dc drive controller
Positions: 0, 90 and 180 degrees
Rotate Speed: 10 seconds for 180 degrees
Control
Dual industrial PCs with LCD touchscreen running Vector software
ArcNet and Ethernet communications networks
Array ARC field bus distribution
Array ES emergency stop monitoring and distribution
Array PD-ES power, data and emergency stop distribution
uTransform-485 2 port Ethernet translation
Links
www.robbiewilliams.com
www.xlvideo.tv
www.brilliantstages.com
www.stufish.com
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