James is a creative technologist and
designer working in the world of digital
theatre. He is a pioneer in the use of VR
and AR in theatre and is trying to evolve
the production design process with his
research in design visualisation.future tech
fVIEWPOINT
48 APRIL 2020 • WWW.LSIONLINE.COM
future tech
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Drone workforce | James Simpson predicts the shape of tech to come...
THE PROBLEM WITH DRONES
My first article for LSi was an analysis of how drones could
potentially be converted to carry moving lights to create flying,
moving lights. It turned out it couldn’t be done for safety
reasons - a drone large enough to carry the weight of a bright
enough luminaire would be essentially a small helicopter. But,
in scenarios where there would be no audience to protect, the
drone would become a very useful tool to help us do our work.
I keep asking myself if we will ever live in a time when
a self-driving truck will back up to the venue, the dock door will
automatically open and a swarm of weight carrying drones will
unpack the scenery and equipment, placing it in the correct
position on stage, assembling it, operating the flying equipment
by patching into a server or by grabbing hold of the rope with
a set of high torque motors and eventually moving off to the side
and waiting in standby mode until the first time you need to run
a scene change...BUILDING BRIDGES
Is the technology there yet? Why could we not do this, given
unlimited power and money? It turns out that, hypothetically, we
could!
Two researchers from ETH Zurich University’s Institute for
Dynamic Systems and Control and Gramazio Kohler Research
created an AI-driven drone, which has a spool of rope attached
to it. Several of these drones work in concert to attach the rope
to scaffolding at either end of the room, making sturdy knots
by flying through the loops. It twists and plaits the rope into
stronger ropes; this process eventually builds a full rope bridge
that a human could use to walk on. The practice proves that it
is possible for a drone to accomplish manual tasks, carrying
objects of very small weight, to build complex constructions.BUILDING THE FUTURE
So what about heavier items? I remember being 16 at my local
venue, and a driver literally threw sheets of 22mm 8x4 plywood
floorboards at me; I realised I’d have to get strong quickly if
I were to survive this industry!
These tiny drones don’t have the weight-lifting capacity to
pick up something like an 8x4 sheet of ply, and a larger drone
wouldn’t have the finesse to manipulate one (ideally, you would
want a drone on each corner, and they would have to be small
enough to get that close to each other).
The point may be moot anyway, because
the down draft of a drone capable of
picking up a sheet of ply would put an
equal weight of air pressure onto it,
holding it down even more firmly. There are
other objects that a large drone could pick
up and manoeuvre, but I wanted to find an
answer to this specific situation to prove
that anything was possible.What I found was the imaginatively named HRP-5P. This is
a robot made by the Advanced Industrial Science and
Technology group in Japan and it has the ability to carry and
install drywall. It was designed as a research project with the
objective of proving that robots could replace humans in various
labour tasks. The robot has the power to lift heavy items, and the
intelligence and programming to position them correctly and
nail them into the ground. It doesn’t take much imagination to
see how a technology like this could pick up and screw down
touring floorboards for us.
However, if you watch the video linked below, you will see the
flaw in the current technology. That whole undertaking would
be OK, providing several days could be added to your tech time
to allow for your rather slow, automated workforce to go about
its job.PREPARE YOURSELF
As ridiculous as the notion may seem, when you watch
these early prototypes going about their tasks, the expected
progression in technology is due to see this mechanical
workforce take over human tasks in the next few years. We see
it all the time without realising it: the self-service till in a shop,
the automatic packing and sorting systems at post offices, gas
meters that send data rather than needing to be read by
a human on site...
Civilisation is constantly looking for ways to replace humans
for automation to make businesses more efficient and to
provide better service to customers. Theatre is no different - we
have online box offices, automated flying systems, intelligent
lighting desks, and CNC machines and digital printing for cloths
and scenery. We have been slowly automating our industry and
displacing jobs for the last 20 years, at the same time creating
new jobs to work the new equipment. As productions are more
efficient and technology allows for more innovation and scale,
our shows are getting bigger and more impressive, which
requires more designers and creatives to think in different ways.
It is predicted that 47% of US jobs will be replaced by
automation in the next two decades, mostly within the logistics
and services industries. Whilst this doesn’t directly tie to the
arts world, we need to consider that there are jobs within our
field that could be automated. Educators, managers and unions
should be responsible for ensuring that the existing workforce
have skills that allows them to evolve
with this technology as it comes, whilst
professional bodies should be stimulating
conversation around technology to
understand what is coming and how it
will affect its membership, then work
with educators and training companies
to teach new skills to existing and future
theatre-makers. I
The robot in action: P //plasa.me/robot“We have been slowly automating our industry and displacing jobs for the last
20 years, at the same time creating new jobs to work the new equipment.. .”