Virtual Reality Environment That Allows You To Walk

University of Tsukuba has developed a prototype system that allows a person to physically walk through a virtual environment. Most traditional virtual reality require the user to stand completely still and then use with hand gestures or control nobs to navigate through the virtual environment. Because there is no physical feeling of movement it makes these virtual environments feel a little fake. University of Tsukuba has created a new gadget called the CirculaFloor that consists of a number of moveable platforms. The moveable platforms are able to move independently across a flat floor so that there is always a platforms where you place you foot. By constantly moving these platforms it is possible to walk over these platforms but staying in the same physical location. Each platforms is able to move in any direction so that the user can also change direction and walk in any direction.

I believe that this is quite an impressive invention and will allow for much greater immersion when using virtual environments. There is a quick video (22Mb) that shows the CirculaFloor in action. For viewing the video it seems that the first prototype version is a little slow, forcing the user to only take small steps, but I am sure this will be fixed in production versions.

Links
CirculaFloor Website
Video (22Mb)