Stringwalker enables realistic walking in Virtual worlds

May 2, 2007 Though Virtual Reality (VR) is moving quickly towards realism on many fronts, one of the major problems in creating a realistic immersive experience is that of walking. If people walk around with a VR headset on, they will eventually bump into something hard and unforgiving – so researchers across the world are questing for a suitable device which offers proprioceptive feedback for VR walking. The human brain seems happy to suspend disbelief and accept many crude kludges in order to roleplay along with a VR event, but the missing factor has been the ability to give the body the same sort of corresponding feedback as the brain. You can’t simulate true human movement with any authenticity without the exertion normally accompanying it. We’ve previously written up two ingenious attempts to enable VR users to maintain their position while walking in virtual environments in the form of the commercially-available Virtusphere and a set of powered shoes being developed at the University of Tsukuba in Japan. Now there’s another clever solution being developed at the same university – the Stringwalker. String Walker uses eight strings actuated by motor-pulley mechanisms mounted on a turntable.

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