UK - Automation specialists Kinesys designed the motion control system for the revolutionary Barco "MiSphere" 'roll drop' low-res screens (also referred to as "Pixel panels"), a high impact visual special effect developed for U2's seminal "Vertigo" tour.

The screens are the most spectacular of several unique LED effects devised for the latest U2 tour by show director Willie Williams, with whom Kinesys has previously worked on the last U2 tour and the ongoing West End blockbuster, We Will Rock You.Conceived by Williams and designer Mark Fisher, the seven custom engineered trusses each carry 27 strings of 63 Barco MiSphere 'balls', totalling 1,701 balls per truss, weighing approximately 500 Kgs each.

Each truss, specially designed by Brilliant Stages for U2, is one metre square in width/height and five metres long, with an open bottom. Each screen, fully deployed, is approximately 12.19m high by 4m wide, and the screens travel rolled up inside the trusses.

The truss engineering and mechanics were all undertaken by Brilliant Stages, while the video elements were engineered by a combination of Barco, Innovative Designs and production video suppliers, XL Video.

Kinesys' Andy Cave and Dave Weatherhead were asked to join the team and sort out the automation by Brilliant. Here they worked closely with Jeremy Lloyd who project managed the construction, and Kevin Edwards, who undertook the bulk of the mechanical design and drafting.

Four of the MiSphere screens fly in across the diagonals of the in-the-round show, and the other three form a line across centre-stage. All are strategically positioned to ensure the entire audience receives a reversible image from wherever they are sitting.

The rolling mechanism for each screen is driven by a 4Kw servo motor powered by a Kinesys Velocity variable-speed drive allowing precise movement at between 1 and 1000 millimetres per second. The screens can be run out to their full length in under 15 seconds - although until the show started evolving during the production rehearsal period, no-one was sure exactly how they'd be utilized! This was one of the major challenges says Kinesys' Andy Cave, "We had to give Willie all the flexibility he might need without anyone really knowing what the parameters were."

The Velocity drives are Ethernet linked to Kinesys' proprietary Vector control software, running on dual rack-mounted PCs. Kinesys also supplied power and data distribution and a Category 4 emergency stop system. For compactness, and the practicality of making the automation system simple to run independently, primarily for video maintenance, the Velocity drives are incorporated into the trusses. They can be powered and run from any normal power supply in this context, and manual vari-speed 'pickles' were supplied by Kinesys for ease of remote operation.

Kinesys designed the system in December 2004, ready for prototype testing at Brilliant Stages and in Belgium in early 2005, followed by on-site rehearsals at GM Place in Vancouver from the end of February.

(Sarah Rushton-Read)


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