TORONTO — Cast Software announced that Ubisense will serve as a partner for BlackBox. Separately, the company also noted that it had received confirmation of International Patent PCT/CA2009/001225 for its BlackBox system and method for realtime environment tracking and coordination. Cast said its international patent filing conforms with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Switzerland, and added that this filing is in addition to the filing #12/421,343 in the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Cast noted separately that the Ubisense-BlackBox partnership is expected to enhance BlackBox’s ability to receive and convert live positional data about moving objects so moving lights, set pieces, spatial sound, media servers and robotic cameras can all be synchronized with the movement of those moving objects, at a speed of 50 Hz. Ubisense now joins the other Blackbox partners Out Board Timax, Niscon and grandMA.
Ubisense provides BlackBox with the location of moving objects and people needed to automatically direct lighting and sound equipment in real time. The technology of Ubisense begins with antenna sensors, which “hear” the active tag and compute its exact location through a combination of time difference of arrival (TDOA or triangulation) and angle of arrival (AOA). This object can be anything from a live performer to a scenery piece.
Through Ubisense, BlackBox processes a constant stream of exact 3D locations needed to control movement of sound and lighting equipment automatically. This Ubisense system can be thought of as indoor precise GPS with instantaneous response, fast enough to allow BlackBox to deliver instructions that allow lighting and sound systems to automatically follow objects as rapidly as necessary.
Russ Chandler, CEO of the Americas for Ubisense said, “Cast is clearly the leader in this industry in lighting design software, having proven itself through wysiwyg and showing that an entertainment environment can be modeled and that information can be used for a production. BlackBox takes it a step further by the incorporation of realtime action with the players themselves to drive the production to another level.”
“We find this to be a very exciting application because it plays to the Ubisense strength of being able to provide sub-second realtime response to many moving objects in a busy environment such as a stage. It’s an excellent marriage of technologies. BlackBox is adding to the success of what other partners have achieved up until now — for example Out Board with what they’ve done for sound in their TiMax system. So now what Out Board has achieved with Ubisense in terms of tracking sound around a defined space, BlackBox now incorporates lights, tying all these elements together to allow a unification of all of these formerly separate parts.”
Gil Densham, President of Cast Software commented, “Ubisense is considered the most advanced, most portable, and most reliable choice in this area of technology. We are confident that the industry will adopt this new capability as a standard and that our partnership will only make BlackBox a stronger product.”
For more information, please visit www.cast-soft.com.
