You must log in or register to comment.
Has vibes of the omnidirectional treadmill from Ready Player One. Sweet.
MKBHD did a video on this. Pretty interesting. https://youtu.be/1KEtxTQUzxY
The video is linked in the article
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/1KEtxTQUzxY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I wonder what it feels like to lay down naked on this thing and have it spin you around.
Pinchy.
Also, hair-pully.
Edit: oh god imagine running fast on this thing then falling over with long hair. scalped
Something I don’t quite get: it seems like this would grind the shit outta any surface it comes in contact with (or, be ground to shit if whatever’s on it is harder than the material of the cone thingies).
Does anyone have any idea how the constant abrasion is mitigated? Or is it somehow just not that big a deal, like it doesn’t actually chew chunks outta (for example) shoe soles?
Spent a lot of time with engineers, but am not one myself. Most grinding discs and things that wear stuff down have a surface made to rip in, and higher opposed friction. Think sandpaper, it digs into a surface with those hills from the grit, and uses the friction to then drag through cutting the surface and removing material.
With this floor, it looks like the wheels are smooth, so all though there’s some friction, it isn’t a cutting action. There’s also the fact that their friction is unopposed and can actually move the person, so the energy gets converted into movement, not the cutting force that would grind things down.
They really are just tiny treadmills, the only reason they’re discs is so they can be tilted to change the direction the “treadmill” is going to push you. If the disc is tilted to the right, the left most edge is going forward, if the disk is tilted to the left, that right edge is moving backwards. Otherwise exact same principle as a treadmill of creating friction to move the object on it.
Hope that helps some. Diagrams would probably help more.
It doesn’t grind anything basically the same way a treadmill doesn’t sand anything. You’re not forcing anything to stay put on the surface, you’re maneuvering on the surface while the surface is counter-moving you.
MKBHD’s video shows it moving him around on a chair, spinning the chair, etc etc. In the closeup shots, it looks like there’s debris on the surface of the cone thingies:
The debris isn’t uniform and is quite obviously not part of the roller material; I just kind of assumed that it was from stuff they’d been testing on it, though I suppose it could be generic workshop crud that fell on the rollers too 🤷
There’s probably very minimal sliding against that surface. From the point of view of each point of contact, it’s mostly static friction, with very little dynamic friction/slippage.
If you ever run barefoot or in socks on a regular treadmill, you’ll feel that it’s a little bit rougher than just walking around normally. But it’s still not enough to really make noticeable wear on shoes (any more than normal running on pavement is).
Basically, shoe soles are specifically made to be pretty tough, so this type of treadmill shouldn’t be worse than normal.
What… they aren’t spinning at high speeds and “grinding” the surface that’s on them. They only spin as quickly as they need to move the surface. Imagine a treadmill, it’s not going quicker than you are running on it, your shoes never slide on the surface, same here.
I really don’t understand how you have misunderstood this so badly.
If you watch MKBHD’s video, you see him spinning himself around on a chair. The chair legs are in constant contact with some part of the cone thingies while they’re rolling, which means friction, which means wear. I posted a screenshot from MKBHD’s video in another response that shows what looks like debris all over the surface of the cone rollers; the debris is not uniform and is quite clearly not part of the roller material (I put a screenshot in the reply to another comment, so I’ll just link it here), so I assumed that it was from testing the treadmill with various objects.
As well, there was no need to be a dick about it.
Yeah, there’s friction, just like there is friction from walking on marble steps, such as those in the Tower of Pisa. But since they are mostly moving with the object on top of them, wear is reduced. In the end, the little wheels will be working in concert to move whatever object is on them in a given direction, but they are round and so will have a bit of drift in short order, which is managed by putting the wheels at angles so only a portion of one side is touching the object. They are likely made of a moderate friction substance with high durability and are probably replaceable, just like the tires on your car.
Make it 10x bigger and 3x faster and you’re halfway to having a holodeck.
I don’t think it needs to be much bigger for an individual, just fast enough to keep them near the center even at a run. Smaller pads will be the way to go, just have to drive and control them in sync. Maybe predictive software to only run where your feet are at or will be, to minimize the noise.
Really interesting video. I can imagine playing an MMORPG where you get around by actually walking and running. Suddenly the biggest computer geeks would be super fit.
Speedrunners must be able to speedrunning irl.
Unikely… Kinda why VR also didnt get too popular, most players just prefer “classic” controls and not movement-controls.
But this is huge for VR and other usages of this, probably even useful for production routing, but i dont have any knowledge of that.Summer 2016 were my healthiest few months…
“Oh?”
The world was at peace for those few months.
like when the collective world went outside at the same time when Pokemon Go launched. Our quiet downtown area was amazing to walk through. all those people.
Kind of a shame that the pandemic was so soon after. I wonder how much it affected the game’s popularity.
I’m hopeful this is further developed and licensed out. I’d love to have one of these setup at home as part of a VR rig
I just imagine myself getting stuck, unable to walk off, perpetually walking in place.
Seems like it would only work for objects with large, flat bottoms—if you tried to use it barefoot it would likely rip your toes off.
This is just a crude early version. Eventually the tiles will be significantly smaller, quieter, and less prone to ripping toes off.
But the Toe-ripping is a major selling point!
Do you have any idea how much it’ll cost to reprint all those pamphlets?
Why would you try to use it barefoot??
That was just an example—it might also be a problem for shoes with heels, or textured soles, or people with feet too small to cover enough disks at once.
What about handstands? Crab walking? Naked lying down? What other useless ways of using this can we come up with and “show concern” about?
Sounds like were pretty close to Ready Player One?
Seems like it might be helpful to prevent people from escaping the work prisons we’ll all be toiling in one day. 🤣
(Was that too dark?) Super-cool tech, though. 👍
This is totally going to be a Black Mirror episode.
“they” would probably opt for more efficient robots and just let us poor people die/kill each other
