Unified Performance Authoring Tool for Heterogeneous Devices and Protocols

Abstract

A contents authoring software with device management for interactive shows and performances is proposed. The proposed system allows user to register and to manage various stage-related devices such as lighting system, fog generator, robots or multimedia players. In this paper, we describe software architecture, XML specification for unified protocol description, and user interface of the proposed system. The system can control multiple devices of heterogeneous protocols in timely manner. Once devices are registered, user can browse commands of each device and can organize commands to step-based list according to the performance scenario. Unlike current commercialized products, the system allows to manipulate authored list of commands during the show instantly. The proposed system also supports to control playback of authored commands by sensor inputs so that a player can trigger devices to execute according to events. The contributions of this paper can be summarized to three points; (1) define unified protocol description with XML structures for simplicity (2) give sensor triggering capability to control devices, and (3) implement fast and instant manipulation user interface during the show.