Stage Automation: From Fly Ropes to ABB Robot Screens

Stage automation is the machinery that moves things around a performer: scenery and curtains flown up into the fly loft, lights that turn and change colour on cue, winches that lift a singer over a stadium and, on a few big tours, robot arms that swing video screens. This post starts with the hemp ropes and counterweights of the theatre, follows the Vari-Lite moving lights that Genesis took on tour in 1981 and the five ABB robots that toured with Bon Jovi in 2010, then looks at this autumn's shows by Harry Styles and Kylie Minogue. It ends with where ABB robots could fit next and what still needs a person at the controls.

Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora on stage at the O2 Arena during the 2010 Circle Tour, the tour that carried five ABB robot screens. Photo: Miyagawa / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

How stagehands flew scenery by hand

A theatre's fly system is a set of ropes, pulleys and counterweights that lets a crew fly curtains, lights, scenery and sometimes people up out of sight into the fly loft above the stage. The oldest kind, the hemp system, uses manila rope, pulleys and sandbags. It became popular first in the United States in the mid 19th century and then in England, because it was cheap and flexible. Stage rigging still shares a vocabulary with ship rigging: the stage is the deck, and the crew talks about battens, blocks, belaying pins and trim. A flyman raises or lowers a batten by hand, with sandbags balancing most of its load.

Wooden drums and shafts in the fly loft of the Théâtre de la Reine, used to raise and lower scenery by rope. Photo: Starus / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Counterweight rigging replaced the hemp rope and sandbags with steel wire rope and metal counterweights, so heavier loads could be flown with more control. Electric hoists came next. They can lift very heavy line sets, follow cues and cut the size of the fly crew, although most of them fly a line set at only a fraction of the speed an experienced flyman reaches by hand. Computer and PLC controls now bring accuracy and repeatability to fly systems, and automated flying rigs that synchronise several hoists can move scenery or performers sideways as well as up and down. In manual flying, Peter Foy was known for the rigs he devised for productions of Peter Pan.

A student hauls on a rope line of the fly system in the drama theatre at SUNY Buffalo, 2022. Photo: Hyin28 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Motorised stage lights go back to a 1925 patent, but the moving light that changed concerts came from Texas. In 1980 Jim Bornhorst, an engineer at Showco, a Dallas sound and lighting company, found that twisting dichroic filters changed the colour of a beam, and Showco built a fixture with two motors to move the light. Genesis saw the prototype, invested $1 million and took the first working system, later called the VL1, on its Abacab tour in 1981, with one of the first lighting desks that could store lighting states. Industrial robots arrived much later. Bon Jovi's Circle Tour opened in Seattle's Key Arena in February 2010 with five ABB IRB 7600 robots, each holding a 6 by 9 foot LED video panel.

A Vari-Lite VL3000 Spot moving light hanging from a truss. Photo: Emanueltilly / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Robot screens, winches and tracking lights on tour

Each of Bon Jovi's panels weighed 700 lb and showed live camera footage and animations while the arm moved to the music, and at times the five arms lined up so their panels formed one continuous screen. The concept, RoboScreen, came from Andy Flessas of Robotic Arts in Las Vegas, who had completed ABB's robot programming and operation certification in Auburn Hills, Michigan, in 2006. His Robot Animator software let him animate the arms like characters in 3D animation software and send the motion straight to ABB's IRC5 controller. Tait Towers designed the rigging that fitted the five robots into the touring stage, and Flessas called industrial robots on a major concert tour unprecedented.

An ABB IRB 7600, the model that carried Bon Jovi's LED panels in 2010, here holding a wax tree at TPC Components in Sweden. Photo: ABB

This year's biggest shows automate the lights and the flying. Harry Styles' Together, Together tour played 12 sold-out nights at Wembley Stadium this summer on a stage built by TAIT, and it uses a zactrack PRO system to manage the follow spots automatically. A total of 305 moving heads were calibrated so that any of them can track the singer, and lighting designer Eric Marchwinski described the job as lighting a performer across a 60 by 45 metre space, in the round, with cameras from every angle. Jamie Burke of Ambersphere, who supports the system, said effects can follow the artist without forcing him to hit his mark every time.

Moving lights and an LED screen behind Ijahman Levi's band on the Red Stage at the Ostróda Reggae Festival, 2025. Photo: Krzysztof Popławski / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

In Melbourne at the end of September, Kylie Minogue sang from a gondola that flew around the Melbourne Cricket Ground before the AFL Grand Final. SimpleMotion supplied the four winches and their automation and Showtech Australia the rigging, and the hoists could move at two metres per second while the control updated her position every 20 milliseconds. Her flight was capped at 15 metres to stay clear of the Raptor Cam, a cable camera system with five winches of its own, and both systems were modelled in 3D beforehand so they could not collide. ABB's RobotStudio does the same kind of offline planning for robot cells, and it is where a robot screen show would be checked before a tour.

A theatre fly system winch that raises and lowers a heavy lighting batten; stadium flying uses winches like this on a bigger scale. Photo: Lambtron / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Where stage automation goes next

ABB's current large robots lift more than the IRB 7600 that toured with Bon Jovi. Its successor, the IRB 7710, and the IRB 7720 carry up to 620 kg, with path accuracy down to 0.6 mm at speeds of up to 1,600 mm/s, and ABB's MultiMove lets one controller run up to four robots with their motions coordinated. A stage built around such arms could move screens, cameras or set pieces through programmed paths, cue by cue. We found no current tour that uses ABB robots this way, so for now it is a possibility.

An ABB IRB 7710 or IRB 7720 large robot set up for high-accuracy contact work; the IRB 7710 succeeds the IRB 7600. Photo: ABB

For audiences at home, much of this is staged for the camera. Kylie's flight happened under an aerial camera rig, and the Harry Styles lighting brief included cameras from every angle, so what viewers see on television or a phone depends on lights and machines hitting their marks. Smaller venues have a reason to wait, because automated rigging tends to cost far more than a manual counterweight system. A theatre does not have to choose, since one type of fly system does not rule out others in the same building, so automated hoists can run some line sets while the crew works ropes and counterweights on the rest.

Wooden stage machinery from around 1900 under the stage of the Alexandra Palace Theatre. Photo: CuriosityScribe / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Safety is the first open problem. A 700 lb screen swinging above a band, or a singer hanging 15 metres above a stadium, leaves no room for a control fault, which is why the Melbourne team kept the two flying systems apart in height and checked every path in 3D first. Speed is another, since most hoists still fly a line set more slowly than a skilled flyman. The skills are changing too. A flyman's feel for a rope line now sits next to automation operators and programmers, and Flessas completed ABB's programming and operation certification before he built RoboScreen.

Engineers plan a robot cell on screen with a FlexPendant at hand, next to an ABB large robot. Photo: ABB

Innovation

AI solutions for effortless ABB robot control.

Automation

Robotics

ceojohntran@chatwithrobot.net

+84905311611

© 2025. All rights reserved.

qtran1215@gmail.com