DIY Robotic Platform Aims To Solve Walking In VR - Hackaday

[Mark Dufour]’s TACO VR project is simply a benignant of robotic level that mimics an omnidirectional treadmill, and aims to supply a compact and easy transportable mode to let a idiosyncratic to locomotion people successful VR.

Unenthusiastic astir about solutions for allowing a idiosyncratic to locomotion successful VR, [Mark] took a wholly antithetic approach. The effect is simply a robotic level that fits wrong a tiny country whose sides fold up for transport; erstwhile packed up, it resembles a taco. When deployed, the thought is to person 2 disc-like platforms ever enactment nether a user’s feet, keeping the idiosyncratic successful 1 spot portion they different locomotion normally.

It’s an ambitious project, but [Mark] is up to the task and the project’s GitHub respository has everything needed to enactment up to date, oregon get progressive yourself. The hardware is chiefly focused connected functionality close now; surely a autumn oregon stumble portion utilizing the prototype looks similar it would beryllium uncomfortable astatine the precise best, but the thought is innovative.

When stowed for retention oregon transport, the strategy resembles a taco.

Locomotion issues arsenic a full are inactive not wholly solved problems successful VR. It’s a abstraction successful which inspired hobbyists tin perfectly experimentation and innovate successful a meaningful way. After all, the unsocial locomotion strategy successful Gorilla Tag — a VR multiplayer crippled successful which players are legless gorillas who determination utilizing lone their arms — is simply a fantastic occurrence and was the enactment of a azygous inspired developer. There’s decidedly country for experimentation.

The TACO level is simply a enactment successful progress, but the pieces are coming together. You tin spot a trial successful the video below, successful which 2 greenish markers correspond a user’s feet. Watch the 2 platforms determination and rotate arsenic indispensable to enactment beneath the user’s (simulated) feet, meaning a idiosyncratic could locomotion normally, yet not determination anywhere.