Existing Systems
There are a range of virtual locomotion solutions out there. Some are research projects, some are commercial demos and some you can actually buy (if you have the money and, generally, somewhere large to put it). By far the majority of proposed solutions to the problem of virtual locomotion are treadmills. Here is a brief round up of them.
Virtual Spaces ODTODT stands for Omni-Directional Treadmill. They don't get points for the name, but they get huge points for the tech. It's an ingenious system. You are probably not going to be buying one of these with your next games console though.
Built for the US Navy to train GI's on. |
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The CyberWalkThis looks amazingly well put together, but it is just SO BIG! Reputedly weighing in at around 6 ton and costing around US$1 million, the CyberWalk requires significant real estate and cash.
These guys do get points for follow through, as it's one of the few commercially available systems out there. |
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VirtuSphereOkay, we love all of these really. They've pushed the envelope, proved the market and kept the virtual home fires burning.
The VirtuSphere is an interesting beast. It's also, clearly, quite massive. You basically get inside of a huge ball and run about. It's a passive system. As you walk up the slope of the inside of the ball, the ball rolls and brings you back to the centre. You provide the power, in effect. You need a wireless link from your VR headset to the computer. The problem that this suffers from, I'm told, is lots of inertia. It's hard to stop or change direction quickly, because once it gets going that huge ball is going to want to keep turning. |
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Ain Shams University
The latest entry in the virtual locomotion sweepstakes seems to be Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt.
This looks to be a somewhat more scaled-down and home-brewed version of the CyberWalk design. Bound to be cheaper, although it is clearly just at the stage of being a research project. |
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University of Tsukuba
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The Virtual Reality Laboratory at the University of Tsukuba in Japan have built a bunch of amazing machines to enable virtual walking. The image to the immediate right is their CirculaFloor system. They've built everything from upside down bipedal robots, a torus treadmill or two, a device that works with strings and the only other shoe based application that we know of.
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Our favourite of course is the shoe-based device. They refer to the shoes as omni-directional, because the user can orient their feet in any direction, but the modules themselves use linear rollers and are therefore not holonomic as the Walker is. The demonstration video (to the left) shows significant drift from the starting point, and it appears that the user needs to remain aware of their physical surroundings in order to prevent collision with nearby objects whilst immersed within the simulation. Clearly, any locomotion towards the sides of the shoe modules is not going to be accounted for.
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Their CirculaFloor is fun too.
This is essentially a set of robotic floor tiles that are programmed to position themselves under the user's feet. Speed is a small issue, particularly with their built prototype, but the concept seems otherwise fairly sound. |
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The Omni
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The Omni is a passive system, similar to the VirtuSphere, but it uses a slippery parabolic dish.
Note that this type of system requires the employment of a barrier and harness to ensure against the user falling over. The VR Walker is designed so that it can be used safely without a barrier. |
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