EU to Present CyberWalk, Virtual World Treadmill

In work supported by the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission, a consortium of researchers have been developing the CyberWalk Project, an omni-directional treadmill with markerless tracking,  control and "several perceptual tricks" [PDF] aimed at letting users physically walk through a virtual world. The research will be presented this week to press and scientists, in a workshop from April 17-18 at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. “In the virtual environment you have flight simulators, car simulators, but the most natural way of locomotion for humans is walking and this was practically impossible,”  Marc Ernst, the coordinator of the CyberWalk project, told ICT Results.

At 6 meters by 6 meters, with a walking area of 4.5 meters by 4.5 meters, the CyberCarpet, as the product is called, is a little bulkier than the 3D camera interface for virtual worlds that Mitch Kapor showed off last week. The researchers hope that the bulk is made up for by a more immersive experience, providing at least some physical feedback and a sense of movement.

Users are still plugged in to goggles, though they're tracked not by marker balls on their clothes or special suits, but cameras.

Use cases like the showcase demo of virtual Pompeii see an educational, edutainment, gaming, entertainment, training, and rehabilitative applications of the setup. I could see it make a lot of sense--or at least excitement--for enterprises, museums, and hospitals, but I certainly don't have a room in my house to devote to my gaming treadmill. Instead, a Holodeck environment, like the ideas being investigated by RPI and IBM, seems much more appealing.

“Theoretically there is no limit to the size of treadmill. In fact, the bigger the better,” said Ernst. “But practicalities dictate that the size of the CyberCarpet is limited to the size of the room, the mechanical constraints of the construction and the money you have to spend.”

Comments

[HatHead Rickenbacker]

How do you stand still on this machine? It seems that you are always forced to move in one direction or another.

[Joey Seiler]

That's why, I believe, the camera tracking system is in place. If you stop moving, in theory, the treadmill should stop moving as well.

The tracking system is also used for some of the proposed "perceptual tricks" discussed in the linked PDF file above, speeding up and slowing down to create different sensations (the site is down right now, so I'm stuck with a vague memory). One problem, admitted by the researchers, is that such schemes can only be temporary. Eventually our minds sort out the difference--an I experience that I imagine might be more than a little nauseating.

[Andreas Konstantinidis]

How can it support 2 people walking in opposite directions?