Robotic tiles follow your every step

(Credit: tokyofiber.com)

A Japanese professor has created robotic floor tiles that anticipate a user's steps and automatically position themselves beneath his or her feet.

The wheeled, moving tiles are covered with a proprietary fiber called Kuralon EC. Developed by Japanese textile maker Kuraray, it incorporates nanometal composite technology.

Attached to the tile like a carpet, two layers of the electrically conducting fiber detect foot pressure. The tile then sends information about the user's predicted step to a computer controlling tile positions.

University of Tsukuba professor Hiroo Iwata developed the infinite walking surface as an artistic display, which was showcased at the recent Tokyo Fiber '09 Senseware exhibition.

He says the tiles could be used for virtual reality or video game applications to create the illusion of walking, which would be better than trying to make the entire floor move.

Iwata is part of a virtual reality lab at the University of Tsukuba outside Tokyo. A few years ago the lab produced the quirky String Walker, a "locomotion interface" that also creates the illusion of walking while remaining in place.

(Via PhysOrg.com)

[chuzek]

Pretty interesting, but those tiles need to move many magnitudes faster to be practical. In the demo, the user has to wait for the tile to move into place.

[ajwatt12]

Mmmmmmm, nanometal

[logangreer]

I've heard of this new technology called a treadmill. It's similar.

[DarkHawke]

Which, as was pointed out in the video, isn't what you'd call practical if you intend to move from side to side.

[DarkHawke]

Cute as a demo, but is this the way to practicality? Even if it was seamlessly fast, you'd still get the sensation of moving backwards as the system kept you centered in the "arena," for lack of a better word. What about the ball-bearing technology shown in Disclosure (a Michael Chrichton movie more famous for sexual politics than tech), wherein a VR system was set up on a bed of large, mounted (and presumably rubber) ball bearings. This way you could walk in any direction and the bearings would keep you more or less stationary. Probably still no running, but closer than this idea.

[acespotan]

hmmm...seems real interesting...but its offly slow and impractical...can't get a real workout out of this.