Motion Control Camera Robots: Star Wars to ABB Arms

A motion control camera robot moves a camera along a programmed path and can repeat that move exactly, take after take. That is how a crew shoots a spaceship model several times and stacks the passes, or films a car from an angle no person could hold steady. The best known maker of these rigs, Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC), had a rough 2026: it went into liquidation in May, MultiDyne bought its assets in June, and it lined up its first IBC show under the new owner for September. This post covers how camera moves were made before robots, how industrial arms took over, where ABB robots fit and what comes next for studios and home creators.

Two camera-equipped ABB IRB 4600 robots around a gold Porsche 911 in the glass box outside the Porsche Museum, Stuttgart, 2017. Photo: ABB

From hand cranks to the Dykstraflex

Early movie cameras ran on muscle. The operator turned a crank to pull film past the lens, and the speed of the film depended on how evenly he turned it. Australian photographer and cinematographer Frank Hurley used the hand-cranked Debrie Parvo shown here for 30 years, and it is now in the National Museum of Australia. Camera moves were made by hand as well, with dollies pushed along tracks and cranes swung by grips. A good crew could make a move look smooth, but nobody could make it identical twice, and visual effects need exactly that: the same move repeated for each layer of a shot.

Frank Hurley's hand-cranked Debrie Parvo 35 mm movie camera, which he used for 30 years. Photo: National Museum of Australia / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0 AU)

The first machines for repeatable moves came from war surplus and animation. In the late 1950s John Whitney converted the mechanism of a World War II M-5 anti-aircraft gun director into an analog computer that drove servos to move lights and artwork in front of his camera. He contributed animated sequences to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), working with designer Saul Bass on the titles, and in 1960 he founded Motion Graphics Incorporated to make title sequences and commercials with his machine. In 1966 Australian engineer Mark Roberts set up a company to service and upgrade animation rostrum tables, the camera stands used for film titles and cel animation. That company became MRMC.

Eiji Tsuburaya, later a Japanese special effects director, on a camera crane on a film set in 1934. Photo: National Film Archive collection / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The breakthrough was the Dykstraflex, built in 1976 for Star Wars by John Dykstra, with critical electronics from Alvah J. Miller and Jerry Jeffress. It was the first digital motion control camera system. It moved the camera along track, boom and swing axes, panned, tilted and rolled it, and also ran focus, motor drive and shutter, so the crew could fly a camera past stationary spaceship models and repeat the move for each exposure. Dykstra, Miller and Jeffress received Academy Awards for it in 1978, and updated versions stayed in use at Industrial Light & Magic until about 1992. In 1981 the Moving Picture Company built the first practical motion control rig in the UK.

A model of the H-4 Hercules flying boat made for motion control shots in the film The Aviator. Photo: Clemens Vasters / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Industrial arms behind the camera today

Since then, many motion control rigs have been built on six-axis robot arms of the kind that weld and paint car bodies. MRMC's Bolt, a high-speed cinema robot, carries a camera of up to 20 kg on a 2 metre arm, swings it at up to 7 metres per second at the camera and travels at up to 12 metres per second on its track, which suits slow-motion commercials and tabletop shots. In San Francisco, Bot & Dolly built its IRIS camera system on KUKA industrial robots, and most of Gravity (2013) was filmed on three of them, with every physical move matched to the computer effects. Google bought Bot & Dolly the same year.

A Technodolly 15 telescopic camera crane on its track. Photo: Technocrane / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB robots have done this work too. ABB says its arms have been used in many films to control the movement and panning of cameras, and that they had cameo roles in Terminator Salvation and Iron Man 3. In June 2017 Porsche used two camera-equipped ABB IRB 4600 robots to launch a gold limited-edition 911: for a month, online visitors booked slots and steered the cameras around the car in a glass box outside the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart. Each robot moved on six axes and each camera on two more, and the team used RobotStudio to check every possible move for collisions before the robots were installed.

A camera on the wrist of an ABB robot reaching toward the Porsche 911 during the 2017 exhibit. Photo: ABB

MRMC's year shows how small this business is. Nikon sold MRMC early in 2026 to Blandford Capital, and the company went into liquidation in May before MultiDyne, a maker of fibre and video transport systems, took over its assets in June and formed MultiDyne Robotics and Motion Control under the MRMC name. Its plans for IBC included the Cinebot Nano, which carries cameras up to 7 kg on a 1 metre arm, and StudioBot for broadcast studios. ABB does not sell a camera robot. An IRB 1300 for small, fast tabletop moves, or an IRB 6700 family arm on a track set up as an external axis, could do the same jobs with the right camera head and software.

The robot-held camera reaches through the open door to show the 911's cabin. Photo: ABB

Where camera robots go next

At home, motion control is getting smaller and cheaper. Content creators already use motorised sliders and dollies, such as the Edelkrone dolly shown here, with a rotating head on a base that rolls sideways or in a circle. In August 2026 FarseerTech, a startup of former DJI engineers, raised about $250,000 on Kickstarter for RocXZoom, a 400 gram camera with a 50x hybrid zoom on a motorised pan and tilt head that tracks its subject by itself. Neither product is a robot arm, but both move a camera on motors under software control, the same principle as the Dykstraflex at desk scale.

An Edelkrone motorised camera dolly with a rotating head, the kind of motion control home creators use. Photo: Maximilian Schönherr / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

In studios and factories, camera robots are moving closer to computer graphics. MRMC's Flair software controls up to 500 axes of motion and links to Unreal Engine, so a physical camera move can match a virtual set. Product photography for online shops, where the same angle is needed for item after item, is another repeatable job that suits a robot. A cobot such as ABB's GoFa could fit smaller studios, since an operator can guide it by hand to set positions and it limits its force near people, but ABB has not offered it as a camera rig, so this remains a possibility.

A CineMoco motor controlled camera dolly carrying a DSLR, used for time-lapse and stop motion. Photo: Justin Jensen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Cost, safety and skill still limit how far camera robots spread. A high-speed arm with its track, camera head and software costs far more than a dolly, and Newsshooter noted that cheaper systems had put pressure on MRMC's finances before its collapse. Safety is harder on a film set than in a factory, because actors and crew stand close to an arm that can move a camera at several metres per second, so the rig needs fences, light curtains or monitored zones like those ABB's SafeMove provides. Programming takes skill too: motion control operators plan moves in software, and the Porsche team simulated the whole exhibit before letting two arms work around a car.

A child watches an ABB industrial robot behind glass at the Design Museum in London, 2017. Photo: ABB

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