Robe launches new products & live show at PLASA 2025

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 centre 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 colour control. 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.

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 PowerDolly 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.

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. 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, 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.

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.

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 colouring 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 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.

www.robe.cz www.avolites.com