Stages of automation - [Control theatre]

The next time you visit the theatre, the scenery and performers you see flying from wing to wing may be under the control of a technology that started life a few years ago in the manufacturing and process industries. The author raises the curtain on theatrical automation. The theatre production of Peter Pan is propelled by Profinet. This technology, which wows the crowds by making theatre performers soar across the stage, is the open Industrial Ethernet standard for distributed automation systems, developed by Siemens and the Profibus User Organisation. Using existing IT standards such as TCP/IP, XML and OPC, and built on the IEEE 802.3 collection of wired Ethernet standards, it enables the integration (via a proxy) of existing fieldbus systems such as Profibus, DeviceNet, and Interbus, without the need to change existing devices.