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The Dismounted Soldier Problem
Pilchie continues:
"Some Ideas
These are some of the ideas that I have heard, and some of their drawbacks:
Don't walk. Use some other input system (joystick, whatever) to move the character. Problem: People get lost if they don't actually walk. See here.
2D mesh of bearings. This is probably the best idea so far, the idea is to have a 2d mesh of bearing that can rotate in any direction, each with a sensor to determine which direction it is rotating in. The drawback is the difficulty in sensing the rotation of the beads, as well as allowing them to move in any direction. Plus safety(things getting caught between the beads).
Spheres. This idea involves placing a person either inside or outside of a spere and letting the whole sphere rotate in an arbitrary direction (sort of like a mouse ball). The problem is making a sphere big enough, with little enough friction that it can actually be moved by a normal walking action.
Mime Walking. This involves teaching people to walk in a special manner to allow the system to know they are walking. See this again. Problem is that it is fake.
Large room/visual tricks. Put someone in a large room and let them walk where they want. When they start to approach a wall, rotate the picture enough that they compensate, but not enough that they realize it is rotating. Problem: obiously you can't be sure they won't hit a wall at some point.
Well what are your ideas on the issue?"
After Y2K had Relic on something that I think would work out... Just get a sort of loosehned up treadmill that you can walk in any direction on and yer set! Although, how many people of the larger wieght persuasion would do this? Maybe its a good way to lose weight! :)
If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
jdube is who I am.
I've played a 3D VR boxing game - you stood on a platform, with a barrier around you to stop you falling, you had 2 hand pieces, that detected movement, and a headset with audio and visual output (so you could see and hear what was happening within the game).
You moved around the ring by transferring your weight around the platform - you could actually simulate walking fairly easily.
Hypothetically, it would work like the logitech "marble" trackballs. The balls would be speckled, with large contrast between the ball color and the speckle color. Optical sensors would then track the movement of the balls, and I would assume, average out the direction and the speed of the movement among all the balls.
One problem would be after-spin. When you spin a trackball, it will continue to spin for a second or two after you let go, depending on how fast you would spin them. Maybe there would be more friction imposed on the bearing mesh. It's an interesting problem.
What ever happened to using a neural signal inhibitor to pick up the walking signals in the spinal collumn nerve cells and translating them into computer instructions?
We have pretty good beta of it going here at [echelon system autocensoring error 431 - no replacement known for this forbidden term] based on stuff the aliens bought left us. And it seems you can use it for a full 2 weeks before you loose your physical motoring skills completely!
The device also has great application within torture and teledildonics (what can I say, we don't get that many woman here at [echelon system autocensoring error 431 - no replacement known for this forbidden term]).
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
--If you have nothing to say, say nothing...
...I'll just shut up now, shall I?--
I don't suffer from insanity- I enjoy it immensly!
...have a "ring" that you stand within (so you don't lose your balance and fall, I presume.) This could also be used as a positional system, while the user wears a belt, which would contain a small transmitter where the "buckle" would be. The "ring" could have sensors within it to provide the system with coordinates for the direction of the user. Then the user could basically walk or run in place and turn as they would in the "real world." It wouldn't be the best simulator without some sort of variable speed treadmill that would be responsive to changes in speed by the user and would allow the user to rotate on an axis. This would be the real engineering feat.
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"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
Actually, this problem occurs in other scenarios too, such as if the subject is supposed to climb a ladder, climb a rock, crawl under a fence or jump off a high building. The solutions is rather obvious; you don't simulate this. Atleast not using mechanical devices. Can you imagine how complex a machine would be that would allow the subject to do any two of the previous mentioned actions? I expect the game industry will try to do something similar to this anyway because it would heighten the experience and earn them more money.
The real problem, however, will remain, and what you probably should do is hook up electrodes to your brain to pick up movement and simulate feelings and sensations. I admit that there's probably quite a few years until we can do that (which is why the game industry will try other things first), but I think that's where we're ultimately heading.
... do swimming.
If walking is a problem, then everything else is going to be hideous. What about terrain? Or stairs, inclines, etc.? The sphere is analogous to what a mouse ball does to get x and y co-ordinates, but that's it: no resistance, texture, depth...
:)
It would work if you just wanted to move in a direction and ignore height, like Doom, but I don't see how it'd be so much better than controlling movements with an arbitrary input device. Resistance wouldn't be hard to add (press something against the sphere) but the rest of it would suck.
I guess you could put some realistic surface on the sphere, like astroturf or something, but you'd better hope the simulation doesn't have a desert, or a wood floor or something. And stairs would really be impossible. Nope, until holograms have physical mass, or we can arbitrarily shape some surface that externally looks pretty real or solid (super silly putty?) I don't think we're going to solve this one.
And remember, direct neural interfacing would really blow if you screwed it up. The non-physical solution would be the best one, bypassing the middle-man, but a *lot* of research would have to be done before I would be willing to try it. (virtual human crash-test dummies?
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pb Reply or e-mail rather than vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
There has been a lot of development in the squid field over the last few years (squids are a type of minute voltage detector), and while it takes a little training (ususaly about 10/15 minutes of practice to get navigable, which is much less than the time it took most of us to learn the nintindo controler) sqid based controlers have been under development for a few years. The idea is you only have to THINK about moving a muscle, and its voltage changes, but it dosn't actually move until you reach a treshold value. With this tech, there are all kinds of fun ways to solve the walking problem. Personaly, I would put squids in an input glove, and have it respond to *pushes*.
-Crutcher
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
The idea is that the user "walks" forward, but in reality only climbs a bit up one side of the sphere, only to fall back down to the center as gravity takes its toll.
Some sort of pressure sensor (as suggested in a previous post) would detect the user's movement and relate it to a direction
Unfortunately, the sphere's radius would need to be very large for the user to ignore the fact that he/she is actually climbing up a hill and sliding back down. Also, the coefficient of friction between the shoes and the spherical surface would have to be determined rather accurately, so that the user can exert enough force to move forwards, but at the same time falls back to the center of the sphere.
Maybe some sort of parabola would work better. Oh well, it's late, and I was just thinking about some sort of "put the wheels on the shoes" idea. It's time to sleep.
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chahast at pangaea dot dhs dot org
..could be achieved by neutral bouancy (for zero G) or by spring suspension (normal G), this would then cover climbing walking anything. With some moveable platforms or surfaces you could even simulate falling over and hitting the ground :) or sitting in a chair.
Obviously cost could be a problem but a cheap version would still provide most possibilities.
cya, Andrew...
This is my sig, exciting huh!
How about this: two robot arms, with shoes where the grabber would normally be. Person stands in the shoes. The arms would controlled so that they move freely when the feet are above "ground", and lock up when they hit "ground level".
:-)
This would have the advantage of also working on stairs or gradients, or even wading through mud.
I have seen something similar in arcade games simulating skiing. These only had one degree of freedom for each foot though. For this to work you would need six.
Of course, things could get unpleasant if the machine crashed. Want to risk being a human wishbone anyone?
The problem with walking, is that when people start doing that crazy leg thing, they actually get somewhere.. If that somewhere does not correspond to whats on the VR display, then you have your problem. Solution : Dont let the feet of the walker touch the ground, ie. suspend the 'user' in a harness and attach their legs to an exoskeleton, whilst the 'user' is suspended 30cm (1 foot) off the ground. The exoskeleton serves 3 purposes : 1) Senses leg movements to feed into the VR unit0r. 2) The device can be mechanically active, so that you can have some sort of feedback from the machine. For example, walking 'up-hill' will require more work that going down a hill. 3) Its not every day that you can use the word exoskeleton in meaningful conversation. Josh
:wq ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Ok. This might be *slightly* off topic, but If it's a great VR experience you are after you shuld try lucid dreaming (basicly beeing aware that you are dreaming, when you are dreaming, and then do whatever you like in the dream).
No problem with walking, eating, flying, doing magic etc...
Well it can be a bit hard to learn of course, but it's well worth it
I believe the basic principle was to have wearable glasses that used a radio signal confined inside the globe to render a 3D on both eyes. Unfortunately I never got to try this though, so I'm merely digging from memory here.
However, using such an approach you could simulate several things. If you need to simulate going uphill, all you need to do is put some resistance on the ball's movement so that the user needs to go "up" inside the ball to make it roll. Likewise, if the ball is pulled slightly with the user, you would simulate downhill walking.
The ball approach however only helps when it comes to walking around. If you need to simulate mechanical things like stairs you get a problem.
As someone mentioned earlier on, the only way to get FULL immersion will be to hijack the brain signals. However, I'm not sure I would ever be able to trust technology enough to do such a thing.
- the Crazy Fraggle
Why not just have a nice large suit that's strung up or something and you strap the guy in. As he moves, the suit translates the movement of his body into signals...
It would have to be more rigid than an overgrown data glove to adequately support the user's body and provide force feedback...
You can't hang in the air and swing your legs around like you're walking without getting tired real soon, so some support would be nessasary.
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There is one core problem here: how to maintain walking motion in a restricted space.
User is suspended in a harness, legs dangling, arms free. This can be comfy if done properly. Manipulation controls, gloves etc can be used for arms. On each foot is a position sensor. A certain line just above the maximum reach of the users feet is designated as 'ground'. He moves his feet in normal walking motions, and the positions of the feet in relation to the ground plane are interpreted:
Anyway - just some ideas. I'm very interested in such issues, so go ahead and email me.
One major problems with mesh (and any other system that lets the person actualy walk) is that you can't compensate for the lack of moving mass easily. The person doing the walking would still compensate for moving his body, so that he'd lean into the movement. This is basical the same as running at a threadmill, if you don't learn to run without correcting your balance you'll fall off. And if you manage to avoid shifting your weight you'll learn a 'wrong' movement pattern, thus making practical application of any skills you get pretty difficult.
One solution to this is to fake acceleration by letting people wear a vest and connect it to wires placed above and around the person. The wires then pull on the vest in a manner that lets the person lean into the movement. The drawback is that the system doesn't react fast enough to follow small changes, and the wires severely hinder arm movement. It also leaves the problem of inner ear unsolved, as you will never 'feel' the movement.
Phase 1: Where do you want to go today? Phase 2: This is where you want to go today. Phase 3: You're not going any
As I see it the general problem here is the inner-ear based sense of acceleration. We feel it when walking, riding an elevator, falling, turning a corner in a car, etc. When the visual sense of place and the inner-ear sense of acceleration are in conflict, most people feel disoriented, sometimes to the point of nausea or vomiting.
In constant-speed walking, the acceleration perceived is largely up-down, except during the first and last steps. Perhaps an appartus with a wide range of movement could duplicate both the up-down acceleration (a simple matter of "bobbing") and the initial and final accelerations, each of which would be followed by a gradual (enough not to be noticed) acceleration in the opposite direction, to ensure an eventual return to center. My gut feeling estimate is that to be "believable" a machine of this design would have to have a diameter of about ten meters. Big and expensive, but perhaps doable.
rat
How about this- combine the ball bearings idea with a motion sensor.
After the user dons specially outfitted "booties" containing sensors and soles designed for walking on bearings, they step into the ring and onto a bed of ball bearings. The bearings sole purpose is to facilitate walking in place, while the booties transmit their signals to the surrounding receptor equipment which encompasses the ring.
The receptor equipment feeds into a system which uses the data to triangulate the location of the feet- sampling as often as is necessary to simulate smooth walking/running. All processed in real-time...
Does that make sense?
"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."
--Mark Twain
Is to create a contraption with a number of mechanical "arms" attached to various parts of the body such as to the feet, knees, hips, hands, elbows, shoulders and head. The person would be suspended in the air by these arms, and they would be used to simulate forces such as gravity, friction and barriers. This way the user could do any number of things in a virtual world, such as run, walk, climb, crouch, etc. etc. etc.
The experience would be farily realistic, but still, the users movements would be only somewhat limited. ie. you can't "roll on the ground" very easily with such a device (possible, but adds to the complexity of the device. the device would have to be attached to a double set of "slideable" controlled axis, one outside the other.). I believe such a device is feasible, but quite an engineering/computational feat. You would need a computer system that can control all the "arms" in real time, taking into consideration a wide range of physics laws and how they relate to the virtual world the user is in. For more realism you could add more "arms" to other parts of the body, but this adds even more complexity as you must keep the arms from interfearing with each other. For still more realism I think we need to look at neural interceptors and transmitters, which is quite a while into the future.
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Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
As far as I remember, the players just jumped up and down on some sensors. Can't remember much else about it, but I found this link which explains the program quite well.
http://www.qwe rtyuiop.co.uk/gs/atoz/programmes/c/cyberzone/index .htm
- doctea
Well obviously, this is not for every home user, but it may allow for enough freedom of movement, not only in a walking direction.
Basically, a device around the waist will still allow for enough movement below the waist for walking. The device would look something like a large C-Clamp that would fit around the waist and lift the user up slightly (5-10cm - just enough so they can't touch the ground by stretching). If more support is required, then add shoulder straps or a vest-like harness to the "C-Clamp"
For input, just have the subject in a mo-cap suit (or something equivalent- tracking devices at key joints is what we are looking for to notice body position). This is where things get tricky, as there is no direct input(such as in the exoskeleton ideas) to say where the body is. But if your software can recognize traditional movements (i'm assuming there is enough mo-capped walking to determine some patterns, or enough testing could be done to provide it)), then the software can also recognize the speed at which things are done, allowing for this to be input into the virtual realm.
I believe this would also allow for vertical movement such as climbing stairs, or a ladder as well.
The only problem I could see (at the moment is that some people may not react well to being hoisted oof the ground, as there is no 'rest' position, just a 'hanging' position. If you add the 'mesh of bearings' idea on the floor beneath them, but DON'T use it as an input device, just support, it could work.
Just my thoughts...
--sugarman--
The suit would take some getting used to. Also "force feedback" has many current limitations. The rigidity you mentioned is also a problem. --If you have nothing to say, say nothing... ...I'll just shut up shall I?--
I don't suffer from insanity- I enjoy it immensly!
Perlin was working on something like this at NYU, do a search for his name and you'll find it. IIR, his idea was to use something like a treadmill that would go in any direction.
-- Virtual Windows Project
The most promising solution to this problem appears to be the large room with some sort of "fooling" effect to make the user always slightly turn away from the wall. It may sound farfetched but consider most of our "realistic" simulations come from the fact that the human brain relies on a couple little tricks to understand the outside world not on very good sesory input (for example use of two slightly differnt images to simulate 3d when in fact the objects are not so far away and could be detected via a focusing mechanism).
What about some sort of mechanism to slightly fool the inner ear? This would cause the user to (unconciously hopefully) list to one side keeping them inside a fixed area...if we combined this with a mildly sloping floor it might be used to good effect. The difficulty hear is of course to fool the inner ear without having to stick needles in their or anything.
Has anyone done any research into what happens when the image presented to the user is slightly tilted from the angle expected by the tilt of their head? Do they walk differntly?
A sort of simple proof of concept of this idea is to put yourself in a large room close your eyes and try to walk straight across...extremly difficult to do! Imagine if you were being actively fooled!
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
A skin-tight light-weight exoskeleton providing force feedback as well as physical movement restriction would probabily be a better solution.
Someone strapped into such a suit suspended in the air by the waist and feet by light-weight arms could provide environment interaction
Hitting a wall would lock up your arm when your fist reaches the wall. Walking up stairs would lock up the suit for each step you take.
The suit could use hydrolics to for the feedback and the whole inner-ear motion thing can be partially overcome through the careful maintaining of motion by the structure. Motion CHANGES are noticed by the inner ear but after you have stopped accelerating your inner reestablished its equilibrium and it seems as though you're not moving. This can be used to fool the ear into thinking you're moving when you're not and vice versa to keep you in the one spot.
With today's technology, this VR simulator is going to be big. The best solution I can think of is to have the user walking on a section of a very large trackball- the problem with this being the curvature- but the advantages being that the user can walk/sidestep in any direction (but long jumps might be problematic. An array of small trackballs as part of the floor would minimise size- but not be half as ueseful as a treadmill. --If you have nothing to say, say nothing... ...I'll just shut up shall I?--
I don't suffer from insanity- I enjoy it immensly!
Pretty funny, but not totally far from the best solution. We're actually reasonably close to being able to decifer nerve impulses, so controling walking via a tap into the spine isn't such a pipe dream. But there are some serious drawbacks regardless. 1) Pattern generators. Walking is a standard "program" the nervous system can "run", meaning it CAN do so without sensory input, and we can measure it. The problem is, PGs also use various sensory input to do "error correction," which means we could get all sorts of addative errors and confusing screwups. 2) Without actually walking, how are we going to make it "feel" like walking? Reproducing sensory feelings is way harder than measuring standardized spine output. It would feel extremely uncomfortable to "walk" without the proprioceptive feeling of walking. 3) Related problem- how are we going to shut down the muscles without shutting down the proprioceptive nerves in the muscles, which would also exacerbate the problems of 1 and 2
I decided to respond to this at the top level because I have seen numerous people state things about it, and I wanted to address all of you. Contrary to popular beleif, the inner ear problem is not much of a problem at all. If you provide an immersive enough visual environment, the human brain will compensate for not receiving the acceleration inputs for moderate accelerations, such as those involved in walking, etc. This is one of the things that the group I worked with researched. In most applications, true acceleration inputs are only required to differentiate self motion from external motion. As an example of this, in the helicopter simulator I worked on, a motion platform was required for the pilot to be able to determine which motions were of the helicopter, and which of the ship. However, for someone standing on the deck of the ship, not watching another moving object, there is no need for a motion platform. Yes it makes it more realistic, but it is sufficient for training purposes to provide the visual stimulation. In fact most of the time when we were testing we didn't have the ship moving, and therefore didn't put the motion platform on, because it was unnecessary.
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Pilchie
The reason that vehicles are simulated is that it is prohibitively expensive to train in the real thing. Walking isn't. You can train alot more people in live ground (sans vehicles) combat war games than you can in a simulator (which everyone would have to train in). It's more accurate, and since the training is against other live targets, it's more realistic. If the costs were a problem, I'm sure that the military would have an alternative solution...
I helped build a system for the US Army about 3 years ago that did just this. The soldier was on an 8 foot tread mill with 10 foot projection screens on 3 sides. The soldier also had a pair of binoculars with LCDs mounted in them. You had to wear a harness that had a rod connected to a sensor. When you took a step, the sensor could tell you were forward of the center of the treadmill and we turned the treadmill on to move you back to the middle. To turn while moving, you just walked near the edge of the treadmill. To turn while standing still, you turned your hips. When you kneeled or went prone, we lowered your eyepoint. The system worked very nicely. It was also networked with soldiers in vehicle simulators. You could really run over the terrain and then crawl up to the top of a hill and peak into the valley with binoculas to look for enemies. The biggest problem was with the terrain databases. They were designed to train people in tanks and lacked the fine relief and features infantry expects. That kind of detail takes a lot of polygons. The harness the soldier wore could also support them. If the treadmill went crazy, they could dive for the ground and the harness strap (like a seat belt) should sense the fast moevment and keep them off the ground. There was also a kill switch an observer could hit to stop the treadmill. I only had to do this once because the machine wasn't calibrated right.
I work in the modeling and simulation domain. One team in our local organization is working on Individual Combatants (the more general term for what we used to call Dismounted Infantry). They participated in some exercises to test and demonstrate new IC technologies. One of the coolest things I saw was an omni-directional treadmill. It was really cool. It even had some mechanical devices attached to the user's torso that could simulate the forces involved in going up or down a hill. You can find more about it here.
IMHO, VR won't be virtually a reality until the technology exists to implement a direct neural interface, like in The Thirteenth Floor. I suspect that this technology will first be developed by the military in Robotech-like "thinking caps" that allow pilots to have better control over their equipment. Then, as we gain more understanding about the human brain, combat simulators will become an application. Finally, the tech will trickle down into the public.
The problem with simulating our world via mechanical methods is that the only available simulator that can recreate every experience is...the world itself. And the world is an enormously crappy simulator; my teledildonics programs never seem to work right...
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
hmm, nice idea, but what if you spend hours and hours of walking but are not walking. just remember those cases of people losing the ability to write because they used this strange input mechanism of the PDAs. the brain is very sensitive and fragile. i am not sure if i would do such a thing.
alex
You put the player inside a big ball, and you reduce and increase the friction so that the player feels walking uphill, rough terrain. or you could oil it hevily or place small motors that keep it moving to simulate slippery surfaces (VR Ice skating). Of course the same principle as electroshock treatment would probably make most deathmatchers feer that (ice skating during a dethmatch).
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They do have an omni-directional treadmill, that will allow you to walk in any direction for as long as you want. It's used for military simulations. The only problem is that after a lot of shuffling back and forth in the virtual world, you may not be on the center of the treadmill in the real world, and you'll feel a conveyor-like movement as it puts you back in the center of the treadmill.
Don't ask me how it works, because I don't know. Just relaying the information.
the ring and belt idea sounds good. i think u can add a trackball like device as the platform, not sure how it would work and how sphericla it would be.. but it would need some kind of breaks. maybe could work like a mouse flipped upside down.. u would walk on the ball, and the axis would be taken like how the mouse does it. this kind of solves the treadmill thiny and also is like the enclosed sphere.. but instead of being in the sphere, u are walking on one... just my 0.02 :)
Ok here's an interesting idea using some of the ideas posted here. Take the wheel on the shoes idea. But don't use the shoes as the sensor. Attach accelaration meters to the joints of the legs. So the computer can read out the movements of the legs. Sort of like a motion capture device. Acutally those camera and colored balls works just as well. Anyhow the idea is to let the person move as he or she likes while usinga computer to figure out how what they do effec the virtual world. Another idea that would cost loads and let them do everything is to use the large room idea. But make the room so it is like the virtual world so the person will see the virtual world via the VR headsets but at the same time being able to touch actual objects in the room and interact with them. Now that might sounds pointless but if you are in a combat sim you'll be able to run dive and crash into things as you like. While also being able to shoot virtual bullets at virtual enemies. This will of course require the system to track the person quite accurately so they don't jump from a high place thinking they'll make it to the other side but ending up falling and breaking their necks.
Its gonna be a hell lot of wires though to get entangled in.
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Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
The system where the user is harnessed up to stand on a platform consisting of a number of freely-rotating trackballs: this was demonstrated in the 1994 movie "Disclosure" starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's the first thing I thought of, good answer. As for afterspin, let 'em spin freely, and put a strain gauge on each ball mount to determine A) When it's stepped on, and B) by how much.
Further, make the entire array slightly concave to encourge a return-to-center and provide stability to the user. Add a rubber ring around the perimiter to prevent foot travel outside in case the user loses balance. Allow the platform to tilt on two axes. Allow the height of the balls to be varied by a small amount.
As a final step, add a clutch to each ball (possibly tied to the strain gauges in a reverse feedback loop) to prevent its movement at times, depending on the simulation. (Also makes it easier to get onto and off of.)
Ok, now change the room to a 1/2 sphere (dome) that the user is inside of. One small camera/sensor, above the user in the sphere, looks down at the user and sends signals to 4 wheels on the outside of the 1/2 sphere. When the user walks right, the dome moves with him. The user can now walk normaly all over the warhouse, and the sphere covers him at all times.
The dome (acually made of a rear-projection material) would be covered with DLP projectors (Like people use in buisness presentations). Each projector would be responsible for a small area of the total picture (1280x1027). The projected image would be proccessed digitaly before being projected, so that the final result aprears flat to the user inside the dome.
The noise made my the servo motors moving the dome would be cancled by the 3D sound system positioned around the outside of the dome and noise canceling technology.
Pilchie--
i efsp59.html) Cybernet, Inc., under contract for the U.S. Army, has developed a "foot-haptic" (i.e. tactilely responsive to the feet) system for modeling locomotion in VR. Patent pending. Found via a search on "kinesthetic analysis".
You're approaching it from the wrong direction. "Think outside the box", dude.
Don't build a user input device. Model the leg's motion directly!
Here's what I see you trying to do now: through a "natural" walking process, you want to have the walker's feet create a change in some input device (much as a hand creates a change in a mouse or keyboard or joystic). Then you measure the change in the input device and convert that to a model of motion.
But you're sticking in an extra (and probably unnecessary) layer of abstraction: Information about legs' movement CONVERTED TO Information about input device movement CONVERTED TO virtual model of legs' movement.
Input devices makes sense in modeling vehicular movement. For example, in modeling driving a car, you don't really care about the motion of the hand itself; you care about the motion of the steering wheel. (The fact that a human hand is guiding the steering wheel is irrelevant. From the standpoint of modeling the vehicular motion, it could just as easily be a monkey or a computer moving the steering wheel for all you care.)
A steering wheel becomes the input device to control a virtual vehicle, because in the real world it ALREADY IS the input device used to control the vehicle.
Input devices don't make sense in modeling movement of the human body. In modeling walking, you care about the motion of the feet -- their direction, the length of the gait, etc.
In the real world, what is the input device that is used to control the motion of the feet? THE LEGS!!!
Try this: Information about legs' movement CONVERTED TO virtual model of legs' movement.
Gets rid of the input device.
My idea: Instead of trying to measure the rotation of hundreds of spinning bearings, measure the motion of the legs in relation to a fixed point. (Actually, all you probably really need to know is the location of the footfall, so you probably only need to measure a couple points on the foot in relation to that fixed point.)
How? The simplest example I can think of off the top of my head is kinesthetic analysis of athletes, like for golf swing analysis. The golfer and the club are covered with a series of white dots, typically at each joint, and is digitally filmed swinging the club. A computer analyzes the digital video, recognizes the dots, and uses them to construct a wire frame figure in a virtual space that can then be analyzed. It's used not just in golf, but in many sports as well. It's also used in dance!! I've heard of several dance projects out there that are attempting to use the human body itself as the interface to control or model a virtual dancer.
If you want to model the motion of a jet fighter, who do you go talk to? An aeronautical engineer! Why? Because that's the person who is going to know most about how a jet fighter moves and how that motion is controlled.
If you want to model the motion of a human body, who do you go talk to? Either an athlete or a dancer (or someone who studies athletes or dancers)! Why? Because they're the people who are going to know the most about how a human body moves and how that motion is controlled.
So maybe you have dots on their feet and a camera trained on their feet, a computer watching the dots, crunching the numbers to model the motion of the feet, and passing their location onto the VR modeling system. Maybe you have a super accurate GPS system (or just some kind of very localized version of a positioning system) that sends back the specific location of the feet to the VR modeling system. If you know the how the feet's movement is changing in relation to a fixed point, then you know the direction of the walk, the speed of the gait, etc.
You still need to decide how the subject (the real subject, not the VR avatar) interacts with the real environment while immersed. Probably the *easiest* way is to give the subject plenty of room to maneuver. Put them in an airplane hanger with a VR headset on. Let them move around to their heart's content in the hanger, model the motion of their feet (and hands! and head direction!) and build the virtual world around them as appropriate, based on that motion. It would look funny from the outside -- a couple of soldiers in headsets wandering around a hanger. But from inside the VR they might be in downtown Beirut or wherever.
With that plan, you *will* run into physical limits -- it would be possible for them to bump into the hanger wall. If you don't need an infinite virtual space, then big deal. If you do . . . eh, you might be able to do the "large room/visual tricks" option to make them change direction. Howver, that's probably too complex, I think.
If you need an infinite VR space, you might need to put them on that 2D mesh of ball bearings, so they can "walk without going anyplace." (You just have to make sure there's enough ball bearing friction that the subject doesn't fall on his ass!)
You don't need to measure the motion of any of the ball bearings. Just ignore the ball bearings. The ball bearings are just the foot's medium of motion. If you want to model head motion or hand motion, you don't try to track the displacement of all the air molecules around the head or hand! No, you track the motion of the head and hand itself in relation to a fixed point. Then why try to track the displacement of the "ground" (aka ball bearings) beneath the feet!!?? If you know how the feet are moving in relation to a fixed point, then you can use that information to model the virtual motion.
TRACK THE FEET, DUDE!
--
fixion
fixion@yahoo.com
P.S. Two minutes searching the Web netted me these links:
Peak Performance, Inc. (http://www.peakperform.com/) has a product called Mocap that captures 2D & 3D motion coordinates with real-time optical sensors. Found via a search for sports technology and biomechanics.
VNSIII (http://www.interlog.com/~drokeby/vnsII.html) allows you to respond and analyze motion information captured in real-time. Found via a search for "dance and technology."
and the kicker:
Whole Body Kinesthetic Displays (http://www.cybernet.com/rnd/contracts/contractbr
Translation: US Army beat ya Canadians to it, dude!
And that's just, like, the first three promising ones I came across!
If you try to do the above you'll never quite do it right and even if you do what about climing ladders, etc(as per another post)? Also I submit that after virtually walking actually walking will be quite weird for a bit. My solution: find some orthogonal mechanism like quake has(but better, of course).
I was always one for the large sphere idea, but I like the idea of the bb array better. But you shouldn't use the BB's for tracking, that would be insane. rying to detect the speed and direction of every one is IMO impossible, since the would bb's continue to spin afetr you walk on them. So just use the bb's a walking surface. But instead of bb tracking, use feet tracking. Like special shoes that have a back and front sensor, and maybe a small vertical tube of mercury with sensors at either end to detect jumping, or climbing a ladder. But you do need "the ring", incase ( I mean I know ) that people will fall down their fist time, aand also until the bb floor method is perfected.
insert your favorite sig here, because i don't want to
Th
Your Johnson Kinetics Inc. http://www.johnsonkinetics.com physiokinetic suit.
If the answer was easy, someone would have solved this already.
Paul Hostetler
Seems like a workable solution would be to use something like a force-feedback joystick in the form of boots and gloves. Attach them to robotic arms strong enough to hold up a human, provide resistance when appropriate and so on. This solves the ladder problem also. Of course, you'd need control points to determine exactly where each finger and toe are supposed to be within the simulation, but that shouldn't be too difficult. The only thing the human would have to get used to is funny feeling gloves (the boots wouldn't have to be too fancy). As long as the visual perception of where the ground is matches where the robotic arm puts the resistance, everything should be peachy keen.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
Why not fill the room with an electrically charged inert gas that can be instantly crystalized into a lattice work capable of supporting the weight of the individual. The modeled environment could be recreated to the resolution allowed by the size of the gas particle and the CPU power. Of course this relies heavily on the concept of crystal growth and contolling fluid dynamics without physically touching them... hmm isn't the grossly underappreciated space program doing all sorts of stuff with crystal growth and fluid control with sound waves.... if you are not a believer in our worlds need for space research you are wrong... change your mind !
Sphere idea - friction may not be an issue. Simply put something along the floor that's piezo-electric (generates electricity when pressure is applied) in small segments, and then use hydraulics to move it. You can coat it with a thin layer of something to prevent people from damaging it as well, such as teflon.
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I don't see the problem with a small joystick. The only time I tried a VR device, it was a small round platform with a railing around it. You wore a helmet, and held a little "laser gun" that had a small stick on top, sort of like the N64 stick. you operated it with your thumb and used the gun to shoot at the pterydactyl that tries to grab you and carry you off the ground.
Intolerant people should be shot.
I've noted several folks mention using a treadmill while acknowledging that this limits the axis of motion for walking. What about a sphere? Not as a shell overhead but in place of the treadmill under foot. There at least one problem that I see with this though. To appear sufficiently flat, the sphere would have to be rather large. That requires are considerable amount of space underneath the floor for the sphere. On the other hand, it does allow you to let the user move in any direction without actually going anywhere.
And then you need to find some way to avoid them from spinning to fast ;-)
Weave a rug out of long, narrow, flat strips.
Join both ends of each strip into a loop.
Drive the N/S loops and the E/W sets of loops.
The floor can be be moved under the subject as a simple vector of the two sets of loops. There would be some experience of "undulating floor" but it could surely be overcome with stiff shoes.
You could conceivably even apply a torque to the subject by moving adjacent parallel weave loops in different directions.
Don't talk to me about the intra-weave friction. That's (a) why I haven't built it, and (b) a problem for the materials scientists.
Canada's DCIEM? You must have got to work with some interesting toys.
You're merely describing the schism caused by dichotomy between the somatic sense "I'm sitting in a chair with a mouse in my mand and a hand on a key board" and the cognitive sense "I'm runnning through a corridor with a on my ass.
This is one of the biggest problems with games. It leads to disorientation and nausea. I know a sys admin who wants to use the process hunter-killer interface and he'll do his darndest to implement on the Sun boxes he got at work but he'll hurl the first time he tries to use it.
Doom used to introduce up and down motion to simulate the physical effect of walking and running around. Haven't played in yonks so I'm foggy.
The reason for vehicles in VR is partly what you said and partly to restore credibility (I was lugging fifty rockets at a time in Doom. Like thats ever going to happen. I'd be crushed to death if fifty rockets were dropped on me.)
With Descent you couldn't do it any other way. And getting used to six degrees of freedom was no picknick. (My hat's off to air jocks of every stripe.)
A 2D or 3D mesh (interposed as 'virtuality' between the viewer and the view) would probably work well in a HUD. Rotation tracked to correspond with head rotation and the grid disappearing when it encounters what it estimates is the distance to an object would help further. Ranges to targets, recognized unfriendlies etc. could be displayed as well.
Of course that merely side steps your issue by actually allowing the person(s) to actually move.
The other solution would be a holodeck.
The room has to be large enough that motion is practical. The floor would have to be made of large tiles which can be pivoted and rotated to redirect the individual(s) away from the wall while the scenery projected/displayed on the walls floor and ceiling rotate to accomodate the new direction.
The only remaining obstacle would be a slight dizzyness introduced between the somatic 'inner-ear' and the perceived (sight sound etc.) though changing the direction of an oncoming breeze would be an interesting exercise.
You're still talking about implementing the holodeck from the Voyager.
Maybe when we can grow components (pico technology from HP labs et alia,) and paint them onto the walls celiing and floor tiles...
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Maybe we're all looking for too difficult a solution. What I was thinking is this:
:) Or add a gun and you have doom.
the user is suspended an inch or two off the ground by an immobile waist or hip harness (the user doesn't change direction. the VR world rotates around him. like in doom, quake, etc) with positional sensors on shoulders, elbows, hands, head, knees for directional orientation of the various body parts. I mean the kind of sensors they use to input dance steps, martial arts motions.
the feet would be in a sort of stirrup which is connected to positional sensors AS WELL AS a force feedback system. this would be used to translate the user's natural walking motions into directional input, and the force feedback would simulate the additional force required to climb, etc.
Of course, this has the drawback of the vertical orientation problem (you would always know that your body is vertical, even if you "fall" in the sim, unless we find a way to monkey around with your inner-ear), but as far as arbitrary movement in a 2d-with-incline world or climbing rocks and ladders, it should solve the problem nicely. or at least adequately. There still would be no sense of inertia.
Nice setup for a Mortal Kombat type game, right? hehe
What do you guys think?
I guess I'll have to break the news
that I've got no mind to lose...
I guess I'm gonna have to tell 'em
That I've got no cerebellum
So you say life sucks? Well, life is what you make of it.
so if your life sucks, YOU suck.
-----BR
Two ways that swimming would help here:
1) Instead of simulating walking, let them "swim" everywhere - suspend them horizontally in harness and give them fins in the virtual world. Then it's pretty easy to track the leg motion and let them swim like divers do.
2) Suspend in water vertically and walk normally. Someone else already mentioned this, sort of - just put them in a suit suspended in the middle of a tank of water (or perhaps some less dense fluid?). Then they could walk whever they liked, and wouldn't move - the resistance would be a little odd, but you could either ignore that as being "close enough" to walking or provide mechanical assitance to the legs to make it seem like normal walking... This way you could even simulate faling or jumping for short distances by adding/removing ballast (or just moving the harness up/down rapidly).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe some combination of an elliptical trainer inside a large ball.
If you've ever seen an eliptical trainter at a gym it lets you walk/run in a more(or less) natural motion.
Maybe inside a ball when the user tries to move their feet left or right the base that the feet are attached to could transfer the info to the ball to rotate the ball in such a way it gives the user the sensation of actually moving.
I am sure the engineering would be crazy. But hey I'm just an "idea man".
Downhill and uphill walking effort could be simulated by the adding friction to the walking motion and tilting the ball up or down.
All interesting ideas. I like the idea of the two robot arms, that would seem to be the best approach. This would solve all the problems like sidestepping, going up and down stairs and hills. If the user was normally raised a few feet above the ground, when they decided to jump off a ledge the arms could loose all support and maybe a cord attached to the users back could hold them until they met the ground, at which point the arms would regain support and push the user back up the few feet. But, there's still the problem of fooling the user's brain, not just their eyes, the inner-ear thing and everything. Ever taken too much asprin and felt kind of out of it for the rest of the day? maybe some mild sedation, like they used in lawnmower man, would make the environment more real. Obviously not a solution for a gamer who's playing hours a day, but it's one way around it without doing the whole brain-signal hijacking.
Contrary to popular beleif, the inner ear problem is not much of a problem at all. If you provide an immersive enough visual environment, the human brain will compensate for not receiving the acceleration inputs for moderate accelerations, such as those involved in walking, etc.
Very interesting. Would that mean that prolonged use might cause motion sickness? That's what causes motion sickness, after all - different sensory inputs not agreeing with each other. The brain gets confused, and you feel sick.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
It is two problems, maybe more, but i see two in a mid morning precoffee haze. the way i see it is as follows 1. allowing normal mobility action for a soldier does not mean just running, walking, it requires immediate freezing, getting down, getting up really fast and getting down again. "I'm up they see me, I'm down" is one saying I used to measure the time between when i was a target, and when i should be on the ground shooting back at the target. This is 3-5 seconds, or target aquisition time. This problem can be mapped onto the ball bearing mesh idea quite easily by using a variable proximity, bendable plastic plate, so that the plastic with the most weight on it would be in proximity to the bearings. I think you need about a 12x12 room to do this maybe 15 x 15, you will have to compensate for when the bearings catch on the plate, which could happen. In this model you could eventually very angle and method of floor to simulate "obstacles" and incline somewhat. 2. the other problem is measuring the movement of the legs and mapping that into vr. This is easy. Sensors at the feet, knees and hips. The hips give direction of movement as a plane between them and the head usually. The movement gained is just the relative position of the feet. my two cents jeremy hunsinger center for digital discourse and culture virginia tech
The grid idea:
Instead of using an actual continuous surface, simulate one with a grid of rigid flat plates floating on an air cushion (like an air hockey puck).
When the user causes the grid to move in a certain direction, extra plates can be dropped in or removed outside of the boundries of the area.
This can be combined with a feedback system to keep the user centered by assisting the movement of the plates mechanically (see sphere idea below).
A modified sphere:
Also, a sphere could be made to respond to small inputs of user force by having lateral (x,y) force sensors in each shoe that measure sideways force on the sole created when walking. Then have motors that rotate the sphere to compensate. Inertia and lag time will be still be problematic.
The user could also be anchored in the X,Y by cables. The force sensors that control the movement of the sphere/plates can be strain gauges on the cable.
(Not so) -Loopy (after all :)
I think everyone has missed the point here. You're all being engineers. Is there a problem to solve here? Who the hell wants to WALK? I want VR because it's NOT real, I think a real VR would suck, just as much as this one does. I have to exert myself in a simulation? Do you realize how many Quake players you would lose if you actually had to exert yourself? I am trying to perfect laziness. This doesn't fit in. If you can't stimulate my brain to think I am walking, then I don't want it. I don't actually WANT to walk anywhere. If I had a chair that would take me everywhere I wouldn't walk. Walking is for first-circuit monkeys. Get your knuckles off the groud, shut-up, and sit down.
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Anonymous Coward
"Shut up and take your medicine."
-- Lanky Doshard
The solution is simple... just make a holodeck, a la Star Trek! I'm sure that, given an open-source project, backed by a beowulf cluster, the problem of hard holograms could be cracked in a year or two. The motivation? The chance of meeting the girl in the red dress yourself ;)
Instead of using a mechanical device to translate actual movement into simulated movement, use electrodes attached to the brain to intercept movement signals and translate them directly. And while we're at it, why don't we do all other I/O this way? I admit it probably can't be done at this point, and there are some potential problems (make it too real and it might screw with someone's head real good, and what if the simulation crashes (picture Micro$oft DirectMind or something as the API for this thing)), but the technology can probably be developed, and if done right, could probably make for a pretty realistic sim.
What could be a better idea than make it so the user hovers above a pad, freely able to move his or her hands or legs while in a VR suit.
You could make millions on the anti-gravity machine alone. When you do, send me one.
- Hugh Buchanan
- Userfriendly.com
The obvious imput device for single-direction virtual reality is a "high-defintion" single direction treadmill. It makes sense to me that a multi-directional treadmill could be designed. For instance, the person would stand on a surface about 1 foot across, that would be flat. Between the person and the floor would be material, like rubber with plastic on the bottom or something, that would provide traction to the person, but slip easily over the base of the virtual reality area. This material could encompass the base, but not like a big sphere, like a deflated one. so it would be like a big bag. I don't know how the base would be held up, but it seems like something simaler to this idea may work. -- Red-Paladin
I actually gave some thought to this once (don't really know why but it seemed fun at the time). I thought about ideas like a mesh or a sphere or suspending someone by the waist in a ring but gave them up as impractical.
What I finally came up with (and it does have some limitation)is a body suit designed with the same kind of input sensors as "the Glove" as well as feedback devices (pressure pads or something). The idea is to make the device completely waterproof, complete with VR goggles. Put soldier/etc into the suit with an air hose in the suit and a microphone headset so he can communicate and breathe, then lower the contraption into a pool of water. If the suit has sufficient mass, it should counteract the body's bouyancy, allowing the person freedom of movement without resurfacing.
Of course this has some limitations, but if you think about it, so do air force flight simulators, army tank simulators, etc. That is, you don't get the effect in those of rolling up terrain, crunching over vehicles, doing multiple G's, or rolling/diving/etc.basically, if most parts of the sym are real enough, I think the mind uses a form of suspended belief and ignores the signals that don't match the vr.
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What you could do would be to use a special set of shoes with rollers or wheels mounted on the bottom. These could be read by optical sensors similar to the ones found in computer mice. All the computer would have to do would be to figure out which direction your feet were pointing in and read the speed of your movement from the wheels. They could have clutches so that resistance can be added, as well.
CAVE Quake2.
It may not solve all the problems, but it is a beginning.
In short, the CAVE is a room-sized projection-based VR system. I am fairly certain it was pioneered at Argonne National Labs. (BTW, they have a *very* interesting Linux supercomputing project going on with IBM and VA Linux Systems).
Check out the CAVE Quake2 site for details (technical info, screenshots, movies!), etc.
Hit Related Sites for more info on the CAVE.
Nothing can possiblai go wrong. Er...possibly go wrong.
Strange, that's the first thing that's ever gone wrong.
Tyler's words coming out of my mouth.
Using a sufficiently large room is probably the easiest and most realistic feeling solution. Heres an idea for an "endless floor".
create a floor composed of tiles on wheels. As the user walks towards a wall, have the floor tiles behind him move around and re-assemble themselves in front of him. He will feel almost natural inertia as long as he doesnt move in the same direction too fast for too long (so the tiles dont have to shift under his feet too quickly.)
And the tiles would shift to keep him in the center of the room.
An "American Gladiators"-style joust VR sim would be awesome. With VR glasses just replacing the eyes. with or without contact it would still rock. For an arcade type machiene, there would probably have to be no contact for liability reasons.
Ok, I realise that this is probably more than a little off topic, but I had a stroke of briliance!!
Ok, here's the deal: most of us have seen Rob's Hamster Havoc animation, right? Well wouldn't it be cool to make this into a game? You could use the whole "sphere-walking-idea" as the user interface, but you'd use your arms too! The resistance on how hard it is to rotate the sphere could be controled by motors that work against you (like a motor that runs a rubber wheel that makes it harder (or imposible) to go in certain directons). This would be great for simulating all sorts of terrains IE: grass, cement, enclines, etc -- hell, if you get going up a ramp that's too steep then they could start spinning the ball against you and make you roll backwards.
If they decided to go a bit crazy with this they could make the walls of the sphere be a screen that displays your surroundings -- and they could use hydrolics to shake the sphere to make it feel more real.
Ok, I've had my rant -- I'll go take my medicine now.
And as I'm about to post this, I believe that I remember seeing something like this on that American Gladiators show.... whatever
I immediately thought "ball bearings" when I saw this. Bearings mounted on mouse-like x,y motion detectors would be ideal - as a start.
After this, it would be nice to simulate slipping or even difficulty in running. Therefore the rollers used to detect motion in the bearings could have some motors attached to them to provide graduated tension to the ball bearings (climbing up an icy landscape vs. climbing up a rocky hill).
Now, we need to tackle 3D issues. First of all, the structure will likely need to be larger than 5 feet in diameter to provide a decent "feel" for realism - taking into account the length of stride for a long person (or someone with unusually long legs). Then, the entire bed of bearings (BoB) should be rotatable to 55 degrees (at least) for mountainous climbing simulations, etc...
Taking this into account, how do we simulate steps, curbs, etc? Well, we could seperate the ball bearings into seperate rings around the player. the rings could be raised individually (or set to rotate individually) using foot high pillars on hydraulics designed to move up and down, and sense the weight (and respond stiffly - as in conrete steps; or softly - as in a muddy marsh) to the person's weight.
What's left? player positioning without using wires. Well, they're now selling little gyroscopic options for N64 (?) controllers to allow you to play without having to use the control sticks or pads. So rotation isn't an issue... Magnets could do the rest for positioning. A few devices like this attached to key points on the body will allow you to tell exactly where the various body parts are (one on each elbow, knee, each end of the waist, etc).
$300k for one of these things maybe?
Next week: I solve world hunger.
Once I heard about a system that you would walk over a small area of small spheres, which, depending on how they roll would signal a direction to the VR environment. Apparently, it was very hard to walk over it, unless you were trained. I believe that if the body of the person was fixed, that would solve many problems. Anyone else has heard of this system?
The best way to train soldiers is to get them walking through a battle zone. You can have all the simulations you want, but when it comes down to it, those are just fancy games. When the soldier gets out there and the bullets start flying, he's going to pee his pants if all the action he's seen is in a computer simulator. So go declare war or a police action on some small backwater country every half a decade or so. It keeps your soldiers trained well. That's what the US does and we have the best fighting force in the world. :-)
I would assume it would be possible to design a treadmil with a large enough surface area to do this. Basically create a floor with pressure sensitive rolling bearings... so the system can keep track of your position, but you can step anywhere. If you were walking straight, but then wanted to jump left, you would just jump left, the pressure of where you were standing would be released and then when you landed it would sense how far you traveled and in what direction you traveled. If you wanted to analyze body motion during the movement, you could use video cameras or a "body suit" similar to those used to making computer animations. The only difficult part of this would be making a walking surface that would hold up under a lot of wear and tear, but I would assume it could be done? Any comments, please email me.
Don't forget to check out the new case I made up on my web page. It's in the computers section. So far people have liked it a lot =)
-S
Scott Ruttencutter
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
How a mesh and harness simply to allow the feet to move and keep the person from falling. The actual movement is computed based on LEDs on their shoes + a switch in the soles to signal when they are actually applying pressure.
I must agree. Let's use virtual reality for the things we CANNOT do. Put a fan in front of me and let me flap my arms!
See this article on a device that can be used for walking simulation. It involves concepts some concepts that have been mentioned in a lot of the articles above. They have built a proof-of-concept device. (Scroll down the article for an image.)
By the way, I feel this discussion is an utterly interesting example of what brainstorming and "thinking outside the box" is about. Great!
Yes, you are right there. -- Another glass of champagne?
Ok what you do is build a large "mat" made out of of flat lego type blocks then as the person walks certain pieces will be moved of the "usable area" as the pieces are moved of the are disasembled into the small little lego pieces and then moved to the area where they came of and added on :)
:))
also you could use some tpye of "power steering" on those big spheres
Those People Who Are Crazy Enough To Think That They Can Change The World Probable Can
I like that tilting Idea. Here's the model I see so far: 1- concave bearing mesh, around 3 feet circular. 2- on the bottom of each ball would be a pressure gauge to see how much wieght is pressing on the ball. No weight, no spin. 3- a variable brake that can be applied to that can be applied individually to each ball. If it senses weight, apply a bit of break, depending on desired terrain. no brake would be like ice, grass or cement would require a little brake. 4- put the concave bearing mesh, inside of a larger concave container with gears to allow moving the concave mesh up and down and to the side. Ie walking up a hill, tilt the front up and add more resistance to those bearings that have weight on them (so they don't slide out from under you). Walking Across a hill, tilt it side ways. Earthquake, shake the concave mesh around and don't put any resistance on the bearings. The real problem here though is safety. for just foot protection, special shoe's could be used, but if you fall your fingers are still at risk. Ideally you could put the person into a slightly padded suit, with no padding on the chest or tops of thighs for ventalation. Also boxing gloves or thick mittens to protect the fingers would be necisary. hmmmmmmm I want to run around in fantasy world....... Brian All speling in this poost is corect I never claimed to spek english
In case you didn't pick up on it, the article was a joke.
How bout a floor that will act kind of like an escallator which is moving in the opposite direction of the walking.
ie.. ever try running up an escalator going down and realize you weren't really moving?
If we can make this floor sort of like that, but in some sort of a spherical shape (but you walk on the top of it, rather than inside it)..
Does anyone remember the baby-walkers?
Perhaps you could have the person supported on an item that could be dragged back to the center of the room without their knowledge. That way they can walk in any direction and never hit a wall. When they come near a real wall, the user is visually prompted to raise up his/her feet so that the mechanism can return to the base.
There are a few disadvantages though, like having to build the thing to hide the acceleration back to base. Also, the lifting of the feet could be troublesome.
-B
ok i havent finished reading the whole thread but i just got struck with this inspiration rather then have one big ball have 100 or so very little balls they would probably need some sought of friction so you dont fall over though :))
Those People Who Are Crazy Enough To Think That They Can Change The World Probable Can
what if the user is standing on two hydraulic platforms(one foot on each platform) feet buckled to the platforms, kinda like skis. and as the user walks a computer regulates the tension in the hydraulic pumps below the platforms to simulate lets say walking up a hill. the platforms could also slope towards a particular direction, so that the user has to lean forward; exactly what you do when you are walking up a hill. the next refinement could be platforms that bend; to simulate small changes in terrain, like putting your foot on a small rock etc..
Writing a new OS only for the 386 in 1991 gets you your second F for this term. - Prof. A.S. Tanenbaum, author of Minix,
An interesting experiment was performed once. I read this when I was a kid and I can't find anything about it on the web so I can't guarantee its correctness, but the experiment went like this:
People were made to sit down on a chair (more like a bar stool really) in what appeared to be an ordinary room. Then the lights went out and, over a fairly long period, the whole room was tilted abut 45 degrees along the person's front-back axis. When the lights came on, they saw the strange attitute of the wall relatve to themselves, and quickly adjusted their attitude to compensate. Hopefully no-one was injured.
I've also read about people using light to paint an artificial horizon on the walls of ships in order to combat seasickness. In searching for references to that on the web, I came across the artificial-horizon glassess (patent pending), which do the same thing in a different way.
What this tells us is that you're probably wrong about having to accomodate the inner ear in a system like this in order to make it believable. It also tells us you may be right about the nausea thing.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
I have seen and read about several differnet ways to place DI into simulations. I saw one that was demonstrated by some people from NPS using an omnidirectional treadmill. The one I saw was the size of a pool table. Before that they used stationary unicycle type device. There is also the work done by Reality by Design. RastaSaf Expect Anomalous Behavior
Well this is still cheating, but use as non-intrusive a vehicle as you can. What immediately comes to mind is my electric scooter. One still has reasonable freedom to move, they just sort of "surf" throughout the word, hitting a throttle, brake, and lean into the turns.
Maybe that's what "Web Surfing" is really about?
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
The floor could be constructed like an air hockey table, and the user wears special shoes.
A control system linked into the shoes can adjust to vary the amount of friction with the floor by variably extending and retracting rubber rollers on the bottom of the shoes.
This works for simulating the accelleration of simulating the start of walking or running - or ice skating!
Finally, the floor can tilt so some extent in any direction.
This allows the position of the users to be controlled by sliding them around - and would be good for simulation of moving up or down slopes and doing real work.
The alternative to limited government is unlimited government.
Peak Performance
VNSIII
Whole Body Kinesthetic Displays
Ken
How the heck are you planning to make one of those? If you have a board thing on rollers, the user will eventually walk off of the board. And you can't use the conventional treadmill idea because circles, unlike lines, have a center. Think about it.
Ken
You need to moderate the above post UP! It points to EXISTING 2-D TREADMILL HARDWARE that was designed and built specifically for the purpose of VR simulation of dismounted soldiers.
Even some regular video games provide this experience. I was just playing the old SNES game uniracers today. You scroll sideways and have to change directions alot. Eventually once you learn the track the moving of the control pad becomes habitual. You hardly notice you are doing it.
Why not suspend the user by harness over a special treadmill. That would allow for free movement, correct feedback, and safety. You have to consider safety for jumping, falling, and other things like pace of movement and simulation of a movable/varying tread surface. I think you could produce such a UI for under $500.00US if mass produced.
;)
"Let's all go play the GitS and Matrix games for the FreedomOfMotion 3000 VR UI."
cheers,
Terry
I don't trust technology enough to allow it to mess around with my neural signals. Many other people in this discussion agree with me (or I agree with them, whatever). A mechanical solution like one you suggested is what is necessary.
And how would these arms you talk about be attached to the body in a way that would not limit movement like bending your joints while still supporting your weight? And it would be a pain to hook up. And I would not want to debug it.
Ken
Well yea it would feel weird walking without
feeling like walking"
The brain would get confused fast. It is giving
signal to walk, it sees the motion of walking
but...the inner ear isn't detecting motion.
When the inner ear and brain loose sync...the
natural reaction is to begin "Stomac pump
procedue".
I had an interesting discussion about this with
someone onece. It apears that this may be an
evolutionary "Defence mechanism". Loss of
proper signal from the inner ear can often be
caused by certain chemicals, say the chemicals
in an amniata muscaria mushroom (big red caps)
or something in the nightshade fammily (other
than tomatoes)
Basically the idea goes that the brain stops
getting the right signals from the inner ear
so as a defence it induces vomitting so that if
this was caused by some poison, it may stop
absorbtion of the rest of it.
(which is why nausea is very common with alot of
drugs)
anyway...I would think that ALOT of people would
react very badly to any such setup.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
thought on this subject before and have come up with some of the same answers as in the question. One idea that might work is to have a base with an array of IR motion capture sensors like on the new Microsoft mouse with the funky red lights on the bottom. The user would have a harness that suspended them above the base so they could walk on it without moving, the user's shoes having a real smooth padding to let them slide on the base; the harness would be ables to move up and down (crouching and jumping) but not laterally. The base would capture the movements of the person's feet and translate that information into speed and direction. The base could also have IR sensors to find the position of key parts of their body and the position of the barrel of their rifle. This is rather ill suited for the home but could work very well for tactical simulates for police and military.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I understand where you might want to do this, but it seems to me that the expense inherent in creating such a think might be better spent on ::gasp:: real time training. Though a VR interface would be cool, i can't see how it would be proctical, since in order to accurately protray action in the feild, you would need to not only neal with walking, but also crawling, ducking, diving, kneeling, and eerything else.
"I'm a sexier female than Tori Amos!" -Meatloaf
Put on a VR data glove, then do a "walking" type motion with your pointer and middle fingers, doing some gesture recognition to determine when your fingers are "walking".
I bet this qualifies as the absolute stupidest suggestion so far.
I remember seeing a device a while back in a magazine. I forget the name of it, but it was essentially a joystick in a box with wires attached to it at various points. The wires could be tightened by the computer to simulate resistance when you try to turn the stick. Well, obviously that particular arrangement wouldnt work, but you could use something like it.
You get a pair of boots or even just pads that lock on to the bottom of your own shoes (like skis, but shorter). When the person picks up their foot, it draws on these wires which are on spools inside the device. When the wire is drawn out, the computer measures the distance of wire drawn and the speed at which it's drawn and produces the equivalent foot motion (you'd have to have a few of the wires on each side of the foot to measure it going in various directions.
There are 3 obvious problems with this though and i can only think of ways to solve about 1 and a half:
1) Rotation. When you turned you'd be drawing the wires along with you. This could be solved by putting the base (where the wire spools are) in 2 sections which are, in turn, on motor controls on a platform. Like if the computer sees you're moving your foot to turn left, it rotates and moves the right base to be under your foot when it comes down. If you're stepping forward, the base is there when your foot gets there.
2) Distance. When you're actually moving forward, you'd Be moving forward.. so you'd need to compensate somehow. I picture a sort of diminishing returns system. Like if you step forward, the whole base still moves forward.. but at the same time both bases and thereby your whole body are being moved backward.. like walking forward on a treadmill moving in the oposite direction at about the same speed you're walking. It'd probably have an upward bound for how fast you can move forward and it'd have to have a hell of a forward-looking algorithm to figure out when you're likely to stop.. but it could work.
2b)You could also just use something like a ski machine. When you put for foot down and move the other one forward, the first one is free to slide backward over the surface. The walking motion would not be exactly right and it'd probably take a while to get used to using though so you dont fall on your face (i have a hard enough time coordinating myself on the damn ski-machines, and you dont even lift your feet on those).
3) This has to do with #2.. but acceleration. A few other people have mentioned your sense of acceleration controlled by the inner ear. While you would, technically, be moving forward you're being drawn backward.. so your inn ear would get all futzed up because you're walking in one direction and your body says it's moving the opposite way. I cant think of any way to compensate for this, and the whole 'sense of motion' thing is probably the most difficult problem in the exercise.
Oh, and a sort of side problem not associated with the actual movement. It'd make a hell of a lot of noise. Between the sound of wires being pulled in and out of spools and the motor controls on the platform it'd be quite a racket. I suppose you could just use really good headphones or something that keep out external noise though.
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
Just after I posted this I saw the EST next to the dates and realized that out-of-time-zone was a possibility. And real time depends on your point of reference. It just so happens that on Earth the generally accepted universal time coincides with GMT. If you go by the sun being directly overhead, my time is the real time and so is yours. But since we can be talking to each other in real time, it's necessary that we establish a common time. Don't brag because it's your time zone. And why am I making such a big deal about it?
Walking doesn't have to be non-vehicular -- but the question is not what is virtually walking, but how you control it. By vehicular I meant the kind of thing that remotely acts like a car (aka truck, bicycle, SUV, airplane, etc.), that you control with some sort of steering mechanism instead of your own body. Although I have to say that using your own body's movements to control something, eliminating the steering wheel layer of abstraction, is kind of neat.
Ken
Why not just build some of those rotating thingies from the Lawnmower Man? I've actually seen those for sale outside the context of the movie. Then it just becomes a matter of providing some tactile feedback when appropriate.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
In many cases, the VR "world" doesn't need to be infinite.. that would present some nasty programming problems as well. The area where you are having the person "play" in only has to be as big as the "world" you have created in VR. This comes into play big time if you are doing something like a boxing simulation. In boxing, it is illegal to leave the ring. So just build an exact replica of a boxing ring, put the user in it with a wireless headset (holograms would be better, though). You would need a method of detecting where the user is in the ring, which wouldn't be that difficult, because that part has already been handled by others (special suits with sensors on them, etc). Now you are ready to fight. And, you can actually move, without the bother of expensive systems to allow the user to move or detect where they are moving.
This applies in almost every other simulation as well. Making the user be able to move infinitely would be a bitch, eventually they would reach an area you haven't modeled.
Sports are easy, they all have fields with bounds. Your area doesn't have to be any bigger than your field. (slightly larger, you have to go out of bounds without hitting a wall.) Still, for sports, why not put the user on the actual field and add VR headset, special suit? That's as realistic as it's gonna get.
For other simulations, you just need to bound it. This has been handled by every video game ever made, so we've had a little practice at this. You just need an appropriate sized real area to match.
Ok, before i start with my solution, i would like to include the government's solution. The government used a cycle on a swivel type thing, so you can "walk" forward and turn, but that would be the vehicle.
My solution is based on a tv series the Mantis, which was quite cool where this handicapped guy made a suit that could induce his legs to move, but that isn't my plan. There was one episode where this evil scientist created a cyborg that was directly controled by his movements, and guess what? That was the vr part.
Because limb movement is easy to simulate (inverse kinematics can easily simulate this by checking the currect position of the farthest out part of the arm and the arm would move in relation based on some limits, an exoskeleton like thing can be made for the hand finger action), all you need to check is the outer limits of the arm and legs. What we need is the legs. The treadmill is the best solution, since the ball bearings are easy to slip on. But then the treadmill can't rotate. Well, make it rotate then. Add a motor under the treadmill that will rotate it based on the turning of the neck (since most people turn their necks BEFORE moving in that direction) or based on the turning of the waist (so you can turn your head and move in another direction). The treadmill with rotate to the point, and the feet continue to walk forward on the tread.
As for the arms, the solution the episode had were strings. Just as a marianet (spelling?), the strings are attached to the wrist, and based on the up down left right forward backward movements, the inverse kinematics renders the arm movement based on the limits and translates them to the cyborg. The fingers can be moved using an exoskeleton input design. The mechanism that is attached to the strings will also swivel with the treadmill to avoid tangle. Finally, the head mounted display will be attached to that mechanism in the ceiling, so it won't way as much, and then can also translate head movement based on current vr technology.
So you now have full body movement in the virtual game. You can then add more things, such as bending by putting elasticity intot he string thing or some give, so you can stretch the string to the floor, and the computer will see the arm move below a point and the legs will match this in the simulation.
If you think the kinematics can't be done with just a few points, check out some of the IK in the 3d packages (3dsmax), with only several points (each hand, legs are based on treadmill info) and some limits, you can have many movements.
yeoua
My friends and I hacked a device into the mouse input when Doom was still new that allowed you to walk and shoot using nothing but your brain. It was just a cheap trick and had some flaws and took a lot of practice but hey it costs like $50 to make and was really fun.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
He might be. But I have found that after using the Palm extensively, and hardly writing on paper(ever), that I will write pretty goofy, sometimes using graffiti characters, it takes a while to get back in the groove. Now I am writing on both pretty consistently and there is no problem getting the two confused.
Spencer Ogden
That sounds like a _very_ cool device. Where can we find out more information about it? Do you have a link, or can you post some more info?
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Not just PDAs - I think typing everything does it too. Hackers are legendary for having awful handwriting. I know I do. I'm in the middle of reinstalling everything on my other box, a job I dropped last week. I made notes of all the settings on paper. Can't read a thing. I was amazed upon reinvestigation that a particular scrawl meant "Velocity". Shoulda've just used Notepad on the other box..
I work with the software for VR systems. So far, this idea seems to have the most promise, although I have not yet personally had a chance to work with it. But short of full neural interface, this is as close to real as we will get.
Use a shunt. Like a hardware switch the impulse either goes to the left or right, to body or head jack.
We can achieve reciprocity by intercepting the signals before they reach the affected regions I.E. output and as for input we simply need to conduct a study of common stimulation errata so we know what stimuli are expected.
Its just like cracking a program, watch what it does and intercept and replace information.
It is obvious that eventually the fastest mode of communication will be headjacks. It is all a matter of innovation.
When we're walking, we don't always move in the direction that our feet are pointing - sometimes we sidestep, or even jump in another direction. But most of the systems described here would interpret walking sideways as walking forward. Of course, the problem could be worked around by tracking the orientation of the user's feet.
There are probably other problems that would require tracking of movement of other body parts, since we shift our weight and swing our arms and such to help keep balance or to give a little more force towards moving in a certain direction.
I would imagine that it would be more difficult to track a running person - feet hit the ground less often, and there would probably be more problems with stability and balance running on any sort of a trackball-like device.
Invent cheap mechanical devices that allow you move around easilly, but still be in a vehicle (sort of like a rolling chair/mechanical skateboard or something like that). I'm sure that we could also add some form of weapon system to the thing, giving our walking soldiers an advantage over others...
Then again, maybe not.
The day we say, "Everyone's ideas are equal, except bigots," is the day we all become bigots.
The best way it seems would be to wear a force-feedback sort of suit and go to a zero-gravity environment.
I am to lazy to read the full thread, but I have seen a system which, scaled down, *could* work. I have a small aircraft, and walking through airports, and in industrial settings, they use this low profile flat beds (motorized or non) which has half-exposed metal balls like ball bearings. The operator, using a hand control with a joystick and some switches, can make a container or a box on it rotate, move in any direction or do both at the same time. I once walked up to one of these guys, and he explained to me how it worked and bragged (bad english - is this ok?) on how good he was. It was amazing how he moved one of those airliner containerized cargo bins they use to standarize luggage handling - he made the thing dance around, moved it to the edge and then reversed the direction of travel fastly. He would move it in one direction while at the same time rotating it. They use this in airports to move the cargo from the little trains they take it to the terminal to the conveyor belts that take them up to the airplane cargo floor, and rotate it so it goes in correctly. And visceversa of course.
I could see a system like this easily miniutirezed (no spell check there obviously) to a small enough not to be uncomfortable for human feet wearing shoes. The system would not (most of the time) move the user, it would offer resistance to motion, variable of course, and the input of the motion would easily be converted into a computer. I see no setbacks in this design, no show stopper, but then I have not done the investigation. The system would have to be set in motion after the person begins walking, so that when his feet touch the virtual floor, it would be moving. All of this and more considerations should be made.
Now, I am going to take the time AND read the thread. Should be pretty interesting.
(sorry for the english, I hope what matters, the idea, went through)
I'd see the problem mainly as how to keep the person still while still giving the sensation of walking. The actual checking where he is going shouldn't be that hard in that case.
How about a large sphere in which you walk, it monitors constantly in which direction you are moving and motorics move the sphere in the correct direction.
This still could have some problems - jumping for example. Jump forward, the machine notices you are very much off the center and starts moving the sphere rapidly - too rapidly, perhapse. But the bigger the sphere, the better. Then the angle upwards is smaller and also the machine can accept more variation from absolute center giving slower acceleration of the sphere (or ground).
I doubt, therefore I may be.
It always bugged me that movies depicted an inability to simply "unplug" (hence "Existenz" is more accurate than "The Matrix".) Sudden disconnection would be a very dizzying, disorienting experience but NOT a fatal one.
Ah well.
I see no problems with the sphere idea, other than the incredible amount of WD-40 it would take to keep the thing moving smoothly... Just mount some rollers in the floor (recessed below the rest of the room a little, of course) to pick up the motion, and let the puny human have their degrees of freedom.
Just like a giant hamster ball...
Since we're speaking of future-tech . . . "It is obvious that eventually the fastest mode of communication will be headjacks. It is all a matter of innovation." Well, assuming you want people to maintain their base physical bodies, yes. I'd prefer to keep my mind as a mathematical model and just forget the physical world completely. If you want _some_ sort of direct presence in the real world (God only knows why), you could always extract the entire nervous system and directly interface with it at any arbitrary point, no?
A company called Virtual Space Devices has developed an Omni-directional Treadmill. It is a pretty neat concept. Check it out at www.vsdevices.com
"Of all days, the day on which one has not laughed is the most surely the one wasted." -Sebastian Roch Nicol
we just a bunch of small nano machines moving about inside our body with the ability to interecept and produce neural impulses. all the machines would be linked by a low frequency signal and would operate like a neural computer. then we don't even need input devices. the computer program exists within yourself, intercepting your physical neural impulses and responding by producing visual impulses. this also has the added advantage of potentially allowing you to expand your neural pathways and increase the computation power of your brain, as well as being able to program wherever you may be. you could also use the nanomachines for medical purposes too - and replace your bone structure with some kind of titanium allow. the super-human era is just around the corner...
Call me dense, but I don't see the problem.
We generally walk forward. It's not a compromise if those in the simulation are told to walk forward only - sideways and backwards are rarely needed.
A treadmill on a pivot that turns when they change direction should do fine. Backwards can be accomodated by reversing the treadmill, but is probably overkill.
Just make the treadmill wide enough so that they don't walk off it (a couple of meters max I would think), create algorhythms that anticipate a change of direction (eye-tracking, head-tracking, pressure change on treadmill, or some kind of feedback device the user uses), and rotate their goal in the scene to keep it in front of them.
I have often played with this idea in my mind and have figured out that the most realistic solutions is as follows:
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Have the person wear a suit that is suspended by wires. The wires would both provide lift (to keep the person upright) and register joint motion (bending and turning).
The foot would be placed in a cradle that has a stilt attached to both the ball and heel of the foot. The tips of the stilts would have ball and socket connections to allow for free rotation. The stilts will be connected by cross-braces to allow for tilt and pitch.
Servos would either apply resistance to provide lift and simulate contact. When the program calculated the foot had hit ground, the servo would apply enough force to prevent the foot from moving any lower. When the person lifted his or her foot (detected by weight sensors in the foot cradle) the serve would feed enough force to counter the weight of the device.
With enough tuning, this system could be configured to feel just like a pair of combat boots. It would also have an extra advantage: terrain. You can't simulate changes in terrain with bearing meshes and spheres. This means you've gone from a situation where you can only simulate combat vehicles to a situation where you can only simulate building combat.
With the stilt system, each foot have have separate heights. Even if it were pitch black, the user could feel his way around with just his feet. If the user were at the edge of a cliff, he would put his foot in front of him and find that the servos give no support whatsoever.
Anyway, I doubt this would be practical enough that Logitech could come out with a home version, but in cases where money is no object, it is very doable. Still, I think it is rather obvious. If it isn't already patented well...oops. I guess now it will be. =P
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
How about this, put the user in a full body suit and suspend them in a gimbal (like Lawnmower Man). The suit is completely covered with tiny cables with little movable wires in them (like a bicycle brake cable). For realistic effect you would need thousands or millions of wires. You could use them not only to supply resistance to movement (walking, grasping, etc) but also for texture and tactile feedback.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
Okay, my suggestion with the sensors was for the creation of a *NEW* task, which is not that difficult. This *NEW* task would not compete with prior tasks (as in walking) at all, and would develop it's own nerve patterns.
If you are skeptical of what I just said, try this experiment for 1 month: Once a day, for 5 minutes (while wating for the TV commercials to end) *PUSH* up through the center of your palm. Nothing will happen that is visible to you, but the nerve association/muscle feedback will build this activity up as a task in your mind, and you will be able to actualy feel the difference between doing and not doing this task. That difference is detectable, and that is how squid inputs are designed.
So imagine an input system that allowed you to direct your movement by pointing in an arbitrary direction, with speed/direction rendered analog by a squid glove. (THink about the way you move in your dreams) Or even using a cranial ring (try the above experiment with pushing forward/back/left/right with the top of your head.
Talk about intuitive, but it does take about 15 minutes before you can get good input from such a system (the first time) but the long term (a day or two) finnese reachable beats hell out all other input devices.
-Crutcher
-Crutcher
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
The problem I see with the ball bearing idea is that walking on a pad of ball bearings would be akin to walking on ice. The bearings are free to move in any direction.
The 2 ideas that first came to mind when thinking about the problem were the 'visual deception' solution and the 'hamster ball' type solution.
Some type of visual deception I think would be the easiest and cheapest to implement, and provided that you had a large enough area it could probably work.
As for putting someone in a hamster ball two ideas come to mind. The big problems would seem to be the resistence and weight. First would be to have the ball floating in a pool of water with some sort of optical sensor device. Second would be to levitate the ball above the ground with electromagnets. The electromagnets would be controlled by a computer and could provide feedback to the ball as it senses it's rotation reducing the amount of force needed to rotate the ball and would even give the ability to simulate walking up and down hills.
i'm thinking of a 'bag' filled with a suitably viscous fluid, and painted with 'dots' like a trackball. Inside the bag, thered be a teflon-coated ring to provide shape, which would allow the sides of the bag to slide nicely over it.
The bag would sit in a teflon coated 'dish' with one or more optical sensors, like a logitech trackball's (as suggested by a previous poster) in the bottom of it.
The fluid would provide suspension, and as the bag slid, motion could be easily tracked in any direction.
There are probably problems with this type of arrangement, but it seems more fundamentally workable than any assembly of single-axis treadmills. my 2c.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
For those that don't mind actually walking, researchers at UNC have created a solution of sorts. They can allow you to actually walk through a rendered virtual environment by tracking your movements with a head tracker and projecting updated images to your goggles. The system uses infrared LEDs embedded in ceiling tiles to synchronize your position with the computer environment. The use of inexpensive tiles allows them to create room environments of almost any size for realistic simulations. The realism is further enhanced by placing real objects throughout the space (a styrofoam block in place of a cabinet) which prevents you from walking through things that you perceive to be solid. While not as high-tech as some of you might like, I find it a wonderfully elegant (and feasible) solution to the problem of immersive VR. The research is funded by DARPA and NSF.
2. the user would be suspended above the ground and the exoskeleton mechanism connected to a stable and stationary shell.
3. the mechanism surrounding the feet would be able to move in all directions, prevent movement in certain directions/beyond a threshold in a certain direction. This would allow a user to seemingly stand on solid ground( the exoskelton determines the location of the ground and does not allow verticle movement beyond that threshold, with an angle a slope is approximated) pick up one foot and begin the walking motion ( this would require a force censor in the exoskeleton to sense the desire to move in a direction and power that move itself to be as close to natural movement as possible(user begins to move foot forward sensor detects and responds by moving the mechanism surrounding the foot forward at an equivalent pace).
I hope this all makes some sort of sense (it does to me)
Advantages: idea could be extended to approximate other movements such as climbing a ladder, picking up a rock and throwing it. Requires space for the exoskeleton and nothing more and allows infinite space.
Disadvantages: darned expensive and hard to implement.
for the inner ear/ balence problem what exactly is the inner ear sensing?? air pressure, something else??
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
Perhaps walking, climbing stairs, ladders, etc... could be solved by putting the user under water, and their movements sensed. one of the more obvious problems is breathing, resistance, and keeping the electronics dry. the breathing could be solved with simply a air hose, or, prefereably, a dry suit, and face mask, also covering the VR screens. And that only leaves the problem of resistance, which i have no clue how to answer.
I don't see why this has to be so difficult. - Laptop computer. - Wireless network. - Some sorta compass. - Central Park. Solved!
The prolem with putting a wire in your neck and translating the impulses into simulated walking is that the brain would still be receiving stimuli from the body that would destroy any perception of walking. To acheive 'real' virtual reality, the mind would have to be completely severed from the body.
There is a company in the UK (in the vicinity of hampshire) that has an implementation of the sphere idea, they don't do any head tracking but they do project the image onto the outside of the sphere. The sphere is floated on a cushion of air (noisy but low friction). I have tried it and it works, though it is a bit unresponsive.
I did know what they were called, but I have forgotten, and am very drunk, so I follow up with thier details on Monday if anyone wants to know.
My thoughts on this problem always ended up at something that looked like a diving hardsuit suspended in one of those free-rotating rings like in the movie Lawnmower Man. The exoskeleton would both sense your limb position and be powered so it could a) try to anticipate your movements and move such that it was difficult to feel it and b) provide force-feedback when needed. Mount the ring system on a hydraulic system like those in movie rides for the ultimate in simulated movement.
The deluxe model might even provide thermal and ofactory feedback. Military versions might even include facilities for eating, drinking and waste elimination by adding systems from spacesuits.
Of course, there would have to be movement constraints so you couldn't damage the exoskeleton by clapping your hands, and the suit would have to be thin enough that those contstraints wouldn't break the willing suspension of disbelief.
Use a device to shut off the brain impulses to your limbs, and simulate the returnback nerve impluses via computer.
*elevator music plays*
Construct a moving sidewalk that is radial instead of linear. Imagine a room that is circular and contains a moving sidewalk that when in motion always moves occupants towards the center of the room. When the occupant is not moving, they will be in the center of the room and the sidewalk will be stopped. If the person starts walking in any direction, the sidewalk starts moving (gently enough so as not to be noticed) to prevent the person from approaching a wall. When the person stops walking, the sidewalk slows to a crawl and gently returns the person to center. If the room is large enough, the person could even start running and never hit a wall. I suppose the speed of the sidewalk could simply be proportional to the distance the person is from the center of the room. The tricky part is creating such a sidewalk.
One way I could see working is one of the strangist exercising devices i've seen on TV. It worked by the user stepping into "stirrups", and the person walks, and the stirrips swing with the legs. Thing of a Cage which the person stands in. Then there are 2 poles that hang down from the center, which have a foothold which the user stands on. As the person walks, the footholds swing with the person.
As the person turns, his feet will slowly change degrees. The angle degree the foot turns with rotate the picture infront of the user. And the stirrups with rotate with the foot.
This would require a highly modified version of the exercise machine, but anyone with any tools could fix it up. My description is weak, but i have the ideas in my head. Maybe i'll draw a picture.
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eclip5e
eclip5e@ccs.neu.edu
ICQ #2567792
"I can't wait until Windows 1900 comes out!"
www.ccs.neu.edu
"Charging a man with murder in this place is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500" -Apocalypse No
Create a Platoform wich can move in any direction, in about a 10 ft diameter, (This alone is hard enough, but let's ignore that for a second)
The platform itself stays in the same place, see, but the carpeting or whatever that is on it, does.
Ok, now that we have this odd platform with a mobile surface, We let the person start walking around, and translate his motion into the VR world through a Video Camera.
Wow, That was pointless, Wasnt it? I mean Obviously this platform wont move just because he's walking, right?
Right. Now shut up for a second, because that's not the point.
Now whenever he gets too close to the edge, or pauses to scratch his butt or something, Then you move the top of the platform so he is now back in the center of the platform.
You can now move wherever you want, and no one can do anything about it, HA!
But dont try using this idea, because even though it's obvious and easy to come up with on your own, I'm going to try and patent it.
And it'll work too!
Not really. But it's do-able.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
The easiest environment to capture all the neccessary data and to not put constraints on the user is a water-based input device. This device would essentially be a pool that would offset the users motion with currents that push the user in the opposite direction and hence maintain their position despite having the notion of movement. Moreover, you can avoid expensive and difficult to calibrate trackers, since all you have to pick up is water displacment over each side, compensate with the correct pressure currents. Based on the currents you would know how far the person moved. You may be thinking: hey water is uncomfortable. However, the if the person is in a head mounted device he will be unaware of the world around him. Again, you may say that he will feel lighter in water. However, if the environment is particularly convincing in that it simulates a normal weighted person in his vision, he will feel the correct weight. Moreover, in terms of the vestibular problems (the cybersick feeling...), this would be cured as he would essentially feel the correct second derivative of motion whenever he moves (which has been shown to be the source of vestibular cues). Good luck implementing it. I had some contractors build one in my house and frankly it is wonderfully convincing. The project cost about 350,000 so most institutions or us lucky engineers could afford it (;
I had thought of that idea before, when I would muse to myself about things, and come across VR. I've never experienced VR before, and I had always wondered how they walked, not knowing that they always used a vehicle. My first thought of how they could possible walk was always some sort of treadmill that was circular and made so that the material you're walking on could rotate in any direction.
But, I'm wondering if a problem with that would be the cloth itself. I'm going to guess that, if it was a flat circle, wouldn't there be some difference in the shape/stretch of the fabric as it goes over the edge around to the underside of the surface you're walking on? wouldn't it make it harder for you to walk, having to stretch that material around the edge and under your feet as you walked over it? And what would you use to support such? wouldn't that cause an incredible amount of friction and make it very hard to walk? then you'd be almost running in real life.
Another thing.. if you really still wanted to do that, you could revert to what was mentioned as walking on a sphere, but, as they mentioned, it'd have to be enormous for there to not be a noticeable curvature of the floor (remember the Battle School in Ender's Game?).
I wonder if some sort of air supported, moveable platform would work, but I'm sure that wouldn't. Unless there was still someway to make it move under you so that you were actually still stationary in Euclidean space. hmm...
Insert mind here.
Ok, here's a solution that you geeks should try one day: get you asses away from that computer screen for once, and try REAL WALKING in the REAL world. It is actually quite nice to do so. We don't need this virtual reality crap.
Isn't there some way this could be accomplished with some sort of magnetic levetation shoes of some sort? Electro-magnets could be put in place in order to control the "hardness" of a surface. Since you are floating in the air, you don't really have to physically move around. Some sort of simple sensor could then be used to locate the place the shoes are, and from that what direction they are moving in, thus doing stuff normally.
If you really wanted to get advanced, one could probably creating a rotation platform underneath, that rotates with the person turning. This would allow each shoe to possibly be controlled independantly by different electromagnets.
If that doesn't work, I think that probably the only way to get a user to be able to walk through a virtual system at this time would be to in some way suspend the user in air. That way they are not actually moving, and one would not have to deal with the physical motion of the person and where they are moving. This might be able to be accomplished via air (like an air hockey table perhaps?) or some other contact-less force.
We do this all the time... sleep. Our bodies have a built in system of doing very complex tasks in the mind and not allowing our bodies move (if I remember from bio its because of our ancestors lived in the trees and it wouldn't be good to fall out during a vivid dream ;) ) but that would also solve the feedback problem, we don't have to necessarly provide all the feedback, in dreams if feels like your walking we just have to learn how to trigger the brain to provide its own feedback.. and yes I know I make it sound alot easier then it is :)
Mounting it initally stumped me, but it's easy..
Just put then thing on top of another get of free moving bearing with some more to stop it from moving physically in any direction.. The external bearings can stop any horizontal motion without adding too much more friction..
As for the enegry using moving the cover/bag around the corners, I have no idea.. Bearings can lower the amount of friction to almost nothing, but the force needed to streach the cover would stiff be a factor.. Mayeb clever shaope and materials cound fix it, maybe not..
A sphere covered in zillions of tiny bearing with a rubber cover would work perfectly, but as soon as you started flattening the top and bottom to save space it would become..
I wouldn't be surprised is someone out there was figured out a clever way to do a mesh metal belt that can bend at any angle.. That would be worth looking into..
A powerer assist/break in the form of a wheel on a coaster making contact with the cover on the outside is possible too.. Power can overcome stiff belts at the price of freedome of movement, but that's not the end of the world for video games..
What about (upside down) hydraulic legs that track your feet movements and catch your feet as the ground would and then move back as you push off to simulate forward motion?
Reading this, and various other comments here, I can't help but think of the getups that were used in the film Virtuosity. Granted, the movie itself may not have been the best, but some sort of partial-pod that you are enclosed in, suspended by, and sensorially immersed in, combined with some sort of devices to give an appropriate amount of resistance to your feet, might give the best "free-form" simulation.
I've been thinking about this for a bit, too, and this might even evolve to something that could replace the big simulators used for airplanes/tanks/etc, if it gets good enough. Or, more to the point, if someone decided to develop it in the first place.
I used to think printing on on Unix sucked. Then I figured it out. Printing on Unix *does* suck. Like a Kirby.
It seems like we have to "crawl before we can walk" in this situation. The holodeck is down the road and we need to have some kind of solution in the near future. My opinion is that the suspension of disbelief will give us some flexibility in making a walking environment. For starters, why not take advantage of the commercial exercise walkers which are already in people's homes. In order to change directions just have a 'compass' that you can turn to tell the computer you have changed directions. So all the machine has to do is monitor how far you walk on the walker and which direction your 'compass is pointing to move you along a trajectory. It seems a little clumsy, but it would be easy to make work and not cost much.
You can always suspend the person in a air with a suit fitted to his body. This would allow for tacktile input as well. Eg. Presure, cold, heat allowing you to feel and touch objects. The main problem of course would be cost. The suit would be made up of small pckets of flexable substance similar to muscle fibers that can be individually or in groups contracted. The suit would be suspended in mid air or in a liquid. (Liquid would mean that there would have to be some motion assistance to compensate). Of course if you are just trying to do a game the phere is the best solution. Just don't think o a solid swear but more like a baloon or ball where the bottum would be ona flat lubricated survace. This would allow you to give a flat floor and be elevating portions of the floor other special effects can be simulated.
Be conscious that by contributing to this question, you are helping the Canadian army, as in "kill".
So if later Canadian troops walk into your country or your Quebecuois friend's house, you know whom to thank (marginally)?
--
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
just remember those cases of people losing the ability to write because they used this strange input mechanism of the PDAs
I know exactly what you mean - there was an article on slashdot that talked about it. Perhaps you missed the bit that explained that it was satire. NO ONE actually lost their ability to write. The article's author made it up. It was humor.
OK, maybe you're being funny, too, but I just got to work on Monday morning and am still humor-impaired...
Only track bearings that have X amount of pressure being applied to them.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
That's a big one for me when I'm tired. I lost count of how many analogies I came up with for why the alarm clock was ringing. Some of them seemed deeply technical at the time (debugging a program or fixing some mechanical device). Sometimes I've pretended that I already got up, and completely convinced myself that I had while in fact being asleep.
When I was in college around 94-95 or so, I got a chance to play around with a VR system that worked exactly like this. They had two treadmills of this sort, plus guns with which to shoot your opponent. As I recall, there were also pterodactyls flying around trying to get us as well.
no, actually i really believed it. maybe i really have a defunctioning sarcasm-gene. (someone pointed that out in a previous /.-discussion.)
:)
:/
anyway, i just thought so because i lived for 2 months in australia, and even though i always handled my mother language perfectly (german), i had difficulties to readabt when i returned to austria. i thought this would be similar.
anyway
bye
alex
After reading this, i went out into my hallway, and shut my eyes, tilted my head (ear touching shoulder) and tried to walk in a straight line. If my head was leaning on the right, i would bump into the left wall, and vice versa.
:wq ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Use a treadmill exercise machine. You feel like you're walking on those. Find some way to let the path of direction rotate.
-cf