Robe enjoyed a fantastic PLASA London expo at Olympia, a leading entertainment technology show that continues to expand, create more buzz and attract a dynamic cross-section of the industry who rocked up in their thousands.

Robe and all its brands – Avolites, Anolis, LSC Control Systems and Artistic Licence – took up the largest footprint on the show floor, revealing a spectacular new live expo show “Excalibur & the Lights of the Round Table” which included two talented dancers, amazing acrobat Oskar Skrypko, and Pauline, a 2.6-ton industrial robot all right at the center of the action.

The Czech Republic-based manufacturer used this opportunity to launch six versatile new LED lighting products – T3 Profile, iPAINTE LTM, SVOPATT Classic, Footsie1 MC and Footsie2 MC, plus the PowerDolly, which is an ingenious and highly practical innovation that the world of ‘festival specials’ and touring floor packages has been waiting for!

Another Innovation Award

Robe continues to add to its already substantial collection of PLASA Innovation Awards, this time getting recognition for its ProFrost diffusion system, which sets new industry benchmarks.

The judges were impressed with the “continuously variable and even diffusion of this frost across the beam, even with shutters and gobo edges introduced.”

ProFrost offers lighting and visual designers seamless levels of diffusion control that were previously unachievable with this progressive frost that smoothly melts and dissolves projections to any desired level. Operable at any zoom setting, it diffuses from 0° - 15°, producing the most natural and organic looking softening to the complete beam dispersion – evenly and across the full field – effectively allowing fixtures to be used as ‘key lighting soft lights’.

New Products Launched

T3 Profile

Joining Robe’s T-Series, specifically designed and finessed for theatre and broadcast environments, the T3 Profile^TM is designed for long-throw applications and takes high-power multispectral performance to new levels, delivering unparalleled output, light quality, and precise color control.

Over 31,250 lumens (integrating sphere) emanate from the T3 Profile’s 1,400W MSL^TM (Multi-Spectral-Light) LED engine, offering user-selectable – CMY, RGB or individual color emitter RGBAL – color control for highly nuanced color work.

Color features include a DataSwatch^TM virtual color library; factory calibrated whites; an extensive 2,700K to 8,000K CCT range; lamp selectable tungsten emulation; and MCE^TM multicolored effects directly from the LED engine.

The virtually controlled CRI of 80-95+ delivers perfect color rendition and skin tones.

To make physical handling easier, UpLift^TM handles can be swiftly attached and removed which greatly improve the ease of carrying larger fixtures, and Robe’s PLASA Innovation Award-winning ProFrost^TM system is featured on this fixture.

iPAINTE® LTM

The highly compact iPAINTE® LTM punches way above its size and weight and is designed to amaze with its power, precision and effects while occupying expedient truss or roof space.

A 170mm front lens produces great optical quality together with a comprehensive feature set, weighing only 30kg, maximizing WashBeam flexibility and performance.

The smart optical design is highly versatile with a 2:1 field ratio, enhanced yet further with a zoom range of 3°- 52° – narrowing the iris allows coverage from 2°- 52°. In Long-Throw mode, using patented xR7^TM technology, this fixture provides ultra-tight beams from 0.7°- 2° without any of the intensity loss usually associated with engaging an iris.

Power Dolly

Getting power to exactly where it is needed can be challenging, especially running it out to a remote location where trailing cables are also impractical … until now!

Robe’s PowerDollyÔ solves remote power issues for all environments from film sets to show stages, festival fields to corporate events to ship decks at sea and everywhere in between. It provides a simple solution to get the juice of illumination to wherever it is needed!

Weighing 80kg, the PowerDolly provides a stable, firm base with a load capacity of up to 200kg for all types of kit, including lights, audio, and AV equipment.

For all round environmental protection, PowerDolly has IP65 ingress protection and for touring and location work, the unit has an IK07 impact protection rating.

Selected for safety, longevity, and extra stability, the LiFePO4 battery within the PowerDolly delivers long-lasting 5,000Wh power. Generating 2,000W for 2.5 hours, or over 300W for 16 hours, there is plenty of time and latitude to power up whatever is needed.

SVOPATT Classic

Iconic luminaires are instantly recognisable in the world of lighting, and following the initial SVOPATT launch, demand surged for a streamlined model echoing the essence of the original, so Robe produced … the SVOPATT^TM Classic.

Blending timeless design with cutting-edge performance, this makes bold impact either as a scenic element or as a dynamic light curtain or as part of a ‘pixel matrix’ combined with other ‘pixel’ style fixtures. SVOPATT Classic has nine individual modules, each with 6 x 40W RGBA multi-chips that deliver over 12,500 lumens of output and 132,500 lux at 5 meters.

With a fixed 4° beam angle, each module supports quick-swap diffusers, so the beam spread can be tailored to all design requirements – individually or across the entire fixture.

FOOTSIE 1 and FOOTSIE2 MC

With its sleek, low design, the IP65-rated FOOTSIE MC brings footlights bang up to date! There are 24 x 4W RGBW or RGBA LED multi-chips on the FOOTSIE1^TM MC and 48 x 4W RGBW, or RGBA LED multi-chips on the FOOTSIE2^TM MC, and these rugged, IP65-rated fixtures are designed to remove any visual barriers between audience and performers with a cool, low-profile, 52mm-high design.

Smooth color homogenisation closer to the source is produced, offering new and exciting possibilities for theatres, concert stages, festivals, fashion show catwalks or corporate events, letting your performers step out in style whatever or wherever the production and weather!

A self-contained cable tray removes any loose laying cables and reduces trip hazards resulting in a cleaner looking installation with quick and easy connection between fixtures, including various angled corner pieces, which are straightforward to set up and highly adaptable.

Excalibur – The Show

Devised by Robe’s in-house creative team led by Nathan Wan and Andy Webb, “Excalibur” was a high-octane romp with a pumping music track, a strong narrative and gravity-defying performance thrills designed to showcase Robe’s latest technologies in the environment for which they are built.

With each live expo show production cycle, Robe pushes the production values and gets increasingly ambitious, and here at PLASA London 2025, the company showcased around 250 products from 14 key product lines, including the new iPAINTE LTM … plus SVB1, SVOPATT, iESPRITE LTL, iFORTE LTX, PAINTE Fresnel, WTF!, LedPOINTE, T15 Fresnel, iT12, iBOLT and FOOTSIE, as well as RoboSpot.

Supporting the lights in the show were the live performers – two highly talented dancers, acrobat Oskar and special guest, Pauline the robot!

“We had the Excalibur and also a robot concept – separately – in our heads for a while,” explained Nathan, who was also inspired by a variety of dance works along the way, including Swedish performance artist Benke Rydman. “But we really needed the right products to be available to realize these visions, and this year all the stars aligned for this to happen, so we took these two themes combined and an original show with our own narrative and individual lighting treatment.”

Arthurian Legend

The show narrative was based around the world of Camelot under the realm of King Arthur and Lady Guinevere.

With Excalibur frozen in the stone by Merlin (a magician, among other things!), the recently arrived young knight Lancelot is on a mission to extract the sword from the stone and challenge King Arthur to a deadly duel over the kingdom and the hand of Lady Guinevere in an epic battle of love and power.

Updating the story of Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table – ‘Lights’ in this case naturally – up to date with a modern twist, the bespoke soundtrack and megamix of genres and styles of music combined with dance and acrobatic performance marked the start of a new sequence of jaw-dropping Robe expo live shows.

Creative Integration

With the new iPAINTE LTM a featured product, they also wanted to give the PAINTE Fresnel its moment in a complementary context, so this fixture was used for coloring the stage and some other diverse applications, which they might not necessarily be the first choice for. In doing so, they illustrated the diversity of the fixture, and the value of thinking outside the box.

The WTF! strobe was prominent onstage – used minimally due to its incredible power – which helped give it max impact, with plenty of high frequency zooms, plenty of retinal overload, plus some more subtle effects. “It was important to show how these hugely powerful fixtures can also be used for some really delicate and intricate work,” commented Nathan.

The iBOLTS in the show were also used with several more theatrical and subtle effects, demonstrating the reach and possibilities of functions like gobos and rotation.

The iPAINTE LTMs in the back and mid trusses were constantly at the heart of the action for the whole show. Their power was very evident, juxtaposed against a large upstage LED screen. They did plenty of gobo rotation effects to emulate the classic music TV show aesthetic and interplayed beautifully with the LedPOINTES on the sides.

The SVOPATTs above and around the booth space were utilized for numerous classic accenting hits, blinder looks and joining in with the general pixel effects work from other relevant fixtures, while around the edges of the stage, iFORTE LTXs provided big side punches that sliced through for the performance numbers.

Fog and haze were provided via MDG’s TheONE and ICE FOG Compack products.

The 10-minute timecoded show ran 5 times a day (4 on the final day) and was programmed on an Avolites D9 console, with a D7 also running in session together with two TNP racks. It consumed 38 DMX universes and contained nearly 700 cues and over 600 pixel effects. An Avolites Q3PRO server running AI software ran the video content that was also produced in house together with the costumes and props. Choreography for the dancers was by Jaye Marshall.

Robotic Matters

Pauline the robot is the brainchild of Ulik Robotic Shows – managed by Ulik Kahlert, based in Saarbrücken, Germany, who builds bespoke robots for performance and shows. Pauline – one of four siblings – is a 2.6-ton multifunctional robot who is self-standing and self-driving. She would typically be used for heavy industrial tasks like precision welding … if she was not in show business, and has also starred in some other high-profile music shows, including Helene Fischer’s 2023 "Rausch Live – Die Arena-Tour".

“We are now very integrated as a team, which means we work collaboratively extremely well and really get the most out of projects like this,” notes Nathan, also highlighting the many challenges, including the extremely short timeframe in which everything has to come together to stage a show of such exacting standards and high production values.

Others were the arched roof of the Olympia venue and its consequent weight loading, which required distributing fixtures carefully across the rig, and of course the high daylight factor as the entire ceiling of the venue is glass, and the weather was, in true ‘Indian summer’ tradition … fantastic for PLASA 2025!

Just as the expo was for Robe!