Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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brantlew
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by brantlew »

mAchiNE wrote:I think for a backtop system a wireless pedometer might be the best option over kinect (may be less accurate but easiear to add to the system and no space limitations so you could go run around on a big flat field somewhere and not be limited by the range of the kinect)
I dismissed that idea at first but thinking about it more - it gives me another crazy idea. Does anybody know if there is something out there like a magnetic proximity sensor with centimeter accuracy and a range of half a meter? What if you could put some type of sensors (or magnets) on the toe and heel of your shoes so that the relative positions of your feet to each other could be triangulated. Combine that information with a pedometer type device on each shoe so you know which foot is stepping and you could roughly approximate the gait, direction, and tempo of your feet and compute a movement vector.

So then you just need a large space like a soccer field and a backtop and you're in business. No fake gestures necessary because you would just actually run around the space. You would need to recalibrate every once in a while when you moved to the edge of the field, but for large chunks of virtual space you could just move naturally.

Another similar but simpler idea...what about wearing an optical sensor pointed straight towards the ground and basically turning yourself into a giant optical mouse running on a giant mouse pad?

And while I'm on a roll - and even simpler idea. Maybe you could just stick an optical camera on a tall pole and plant it at the edge of the field. Then wear a big refective hat or a light source and have the camera compute your position on the field and transmit to your backtop.

Anybody want to look like a huge dork running around in public with VR gear on? :D
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by mAchiNE »

PalmerTech wrote:Don't forget this for walking in place: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5-NNzaL_1g" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
can be used for actually running around as well as running in place
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by mAchiNE »

brantlew wrote:Another similar but simpler idea...what about wearing an optical sensor pointed straight towards the ground and basically turning yourself into a giant optical mouse running on a giant mouse pad?

Anybody want to look like a huge dork running around in public with VR gear on? :D
Haha that might actually work! maybe even just using a camera
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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brantlew wrote:
mAchiNE wrote:I think for a backtop system a wireless pedometer might be the best option over kinect (may be less accurate but easiear to add to the system and no space limitations so you could go run around on a big flat field somewhere and not be limited by the range of the kinect)
I dismissed that idea at first but thinking about it more - it gives me another crazy idea. Does anybody know if there is something out there like a magnetic proximity sensor with centimeter accuracy and a range of half a meter? What if you could put some type of sensors (or magnets) on the toe and heel of your shoes so that the relative positions of your feet to each other could be triangulated. Combine that information with a pedometer type device on each shoe so you know which foot is stepping and you could roughly approximate the gait, direction, and tempo of your feet and compute a movement vector.

So then you just need a large space like a soccer field and a backtop and you're in business. No fake gestures necessary because you would just actually run around the space. You would need to recalibrate every once in a while when you moved to the edge of the field, but for large chunks of virtual space you could just move naturally.

Another similar but simpler idea...what about wearing an optical sensor pointed straight towards the ground and basically turning yourself into a giant optical mouse running on a giant mouse pad?

And while I'm on a roll - and even simpler idea. Maybe you could just stick an optical camera on a tall pole and plant it at the edge of the field. Then wear a big refective hat or a light source and have the camera compute your position on the field and transmit to your backtop.

Anybody want to look like a huge dork running around in public with VR gear on? :D
I actually wanted to try this as it was the best "trial" method i could come up with. In my HMD thread i mention that once i got the head tracking and gun tracking working with the large FOV HMD you just burn to be able to physically walk around in a virtual world because walking around with the nunchuck joystick kills the fun. I actually thought about the camera pointed at ground option but didn't have the skills to do the software. It would be awesome to try but you need friends around to stop you walking into things and stop you getting beat up for being a geek :)



Back to the sphere.... I go on and off these idea's by the hour as my inspiration waxes and wanes through the day but looking at that sight again...

https://www.playdomes.com/order.php?u=4 ... cs2=0&sh=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

4 x 8 ft Play Dome $149

Image

Buying 2x 4 feet domes gives you an 8 feet ball and just ask that the 'equatorial' joiners be the 6 pipe type full ones instead of 4 pipe type floor ones so you can make the full sphere with standard parts. If the sphere isn't perfect, just cutting the length of the pipes would 'tune' the shape.

Once we have the sphere we need to make it smooth to roll on casters or... use 4 long rollers as a base in a square configuration. This should hold it stable, reduce drag from small wheels and provide 4 great sensor speed points if required. Hell, they could even be motorised to match walking gesture speed if you want to go crazy and eliminate rotating mass problems.

That sphere may just rotate on large enough rollers as it is without making a smooth shell. The next problem to solve is the holes so we can walk in it. I had an idea to use cheap light galvanised 'furring channel' or similar and just cut and rivet filler pieces between the pipe of the ball until the gaps are small enough as to not fall or trip though.

Mmkay shoot it down :)

Edit-

1. Those domes do not look like a full 180 semi circle so a custom centre might need to be added between. Not so hard but adds to cost and effort.
2. The strength of the structure comes from external force and may be more prone to distort from internal force, may need extra riveting.
3. Drilling multiple holes along the pipes to fix boards or channels as fillers would weaken the pipes which would be a under a lot of stress where you stand on them.
Last edited by Okta on Thu Oct 27, 2011 9:38 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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Okta wrote:It would be awesome to try but you need friends around to stop you walking into things and stop you getting beat up for being a geek :)
If your bounds were well defined (ie. a soccer field) then the software could just darken your HMD display as you approached the boundary and turn off the display if you crossed out of bounds. Maybe the game could automatically be paused as well. You would need a quick way to recalibrate ("turn around") so that it didn't disturb your play too much.
Okta wrote:Once we have the sphere we need to make is smooth for casters or... use 4 long rollers as a base in a square configuration.
Doesn't seem like it would roll smoothly at diagonal angles - especially if the sphere itself is geodesic and not smooth.
Last edited by brantlew on Thu Oct 27, 2011 7:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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Further thoughts:

- The camera on pole idea would probably be the simplest to implement and most accurate. (high res cam needed)

- The mouse idea would be a complicated by the fact that there's nowhere to attach a camera on your body that doesn't also move independently. You would have to filter out all the twisting/tilting motions from the actual movements. Maybe it could be handled by smart software. Maybe you could use a steady-cam rig to cancel out body motion. Assuming these difficulties could be overcome, the mouse idea does has the advantage of handling non-uniform, cluttered, and indoor environments.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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brantlew wrote:
Okta wrote:Once we have the sphere we need to make is smooth for casters or... use 4 long rollers as a base in a square configuration.
Doesn't seem like it would roll smoothly at diagonal angles - especially if the sphere itself is geodesic and not smooth.
Yeah i was thinking on that but more thinking it would roll smooth when walking towards a diagonal but rub on the side rollers if walking square towards a roller.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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For a camera mast you could probably build something maybe 15 ft high with PCV pipe and accurately cover a soccer sized area (I'm just guessing...haven't done the math)

But if you want to go crazy check out this bad boy...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hciDq7MYL2U[/youtube]

At 37ft you could accurately cover a HUGE area - multiple city blocks. You would need a really bright light on your head and it would probably only work at night but there you go...

Update: Plus imagine how cool co-op or deathmatch would be like that.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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ok - gotta get this off my chest. Here is a more fleshed out idea for the camera pole that basically adapts the WiiMote Whiteboard project to a large space.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5EvhHy7eQ[/youtube]

1. Build 4 towers out of low cost material like PVC - lets say 15 feet high. Fasten 4 WiiMotes to the top of the towers. You can find mounting brackets for Wii here. http://irpensonline.com/

2. Build a battery powered ball with dozens of IR LED's attached to the outside and attach that to some type of hat or helmet.

3. Now go out to your favorite empty space. The ideal location would be a football or soccer field with some power lines nearby for a strong magnetic signature.

4. Place the poles at the 4 corners of a rectangle and face the WiiMotes towards the center of the field. Use a laser range finder to determine the distance from each pole to it's neighbor. Input these distances into your calibration tool to capture the real world geometry of the field.

5. Now calibrate the Wii's by walking the entire edge of the rectangle with your LED hat on. Between all 4 Wii's you should get total visual coverage of the edge and the rectangle that you trace out will define the virtual boundary of the game space.

6. Use a magnetic/gyroscopic tracker to determine your head orientation.

7. Now you should be able to run around the space and have the real-world vectors converted to game vectors. You will probably need a small computer (like a netbook) at each corner to monitor each WiiMote (via BlueTooth) and for coordinate transmission. The coordinates from each corner will be transmitted over regular WiFi to the backtop and an average calculated to determine the in-game coordinates. As a bonus, you can also use the coordinates to track height changes so crouching and jumping can be detected as well.

8. If you step outside the rectangular boundary the software will automatically pause the game, dim your HMD display, and go into calibration mode. To calibrate just keep turning until the display brightens again (this is when you are facing directly back into the play field). Walk forward into the play field to automatically unpause the game.


How does that sound?


Update: Alternatively if you can find an empty space by a tall building, like an empty parking lot then you could put a single Wii really high up and calibrate your field like the Wii Whiteboard. Your resolution and accuracy would suffer a bit.

Update 2:

9. After geometry calibration you could also calibrate your maximum speed so for example you could choose to just walk in real life and have your character run. The biggest benefit is that it allows you to scale your field down. You could now set one up in your backyard and move around in a much larger virtual space before hitting the edge. Also, if walking replaces running then you could play the game a lot longer without tiring.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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That sounds like a good idea for a permanent setup, but I don't see many people setting up something like that so they can go play games for a few hours....

Thats why even though it may be harder software wise to set up, the "human mouse" idea is better because logistically is much simpiler and more portable, i.e. you actually could just go run around a soccer field without any major setup involved, you could even program into the software to pick up the lines painted on the grass to define your bounradies
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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mAchiNE wrote:"human mouse" idea is better because logistically is much simpiler and more portable
True, but I think it might have much bigger obstacles that prevent it from working easily. You might have to resort to forward facing cameras and much harder scene reconstruction software and/or marker cards to pull it off. All doable for sure but with a good bit more R&D and probably just as much calibration.

The "WiiSpace" has the benefit of using existing technology, known techniques, and available code to start with. For me that's what make it the most exciting solution so far - because I can actually see it functioning in short order and giving really good results - plus with the scaling it's something that you could do in your backyard. 20 minutes of setup would not be too much for an enthusiast if it worked really well.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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Am I missing something? If you have a soccer field sized space, why would you need all that trouble? You could probably get by just with an accelerometer and gyroscope, for example whats in the Wiimote+. It would not be perfect 1:1 like with optical, but should give you a decent estimate of movement. Enough to at least track walking, and differentiate between running, ducking, jumping, etc. It would not be enough for the detailed type of VR Palmer has talked about, where you see your own body rendered, but for playing an FPS game it should be fine.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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cybereality wrote:Am I missing something? If you have a soccer field sized space, why would you need all that trouble? You could probably get by just with an accelerometer and gyroscope, for example whats in the Wiimote+. It would not be perfect 1:1 like with optical, but should give you a decent estimate of movement. Enough to at least track walking, and differentiate between running, ducking, jumping, etc. It would not be enough for the detailed type of VR Palmer has talked about, where you see your own body rendered, but for playing an FPS game it should be fine.
That's an excellent idea Cyber! Much better than the optical mouse. I don't really have any practical experience with them to know how accurate they would be though. How do they respond to slower movements, how does bouncing and vibration effect them, etc? You are probably right though - in a large enough space it's not going to be big deal if you drift a few meters. Except at the boundaries. It would be scary to trust in a dead reckoning device when at any moment you might smash into a tree. But maybe you could use GPS to keep you in safe bounds? If so then you really could operate in extraordinarily large spaces. Just pace off your play region under GPS monitoring, then walk to the center and go...that would be great!

I suspect that it might not work as well in the backyard scenario. There I think the perfect accuracy of the optical system would win out - especially for scaled movements and boundary detection. But of course the backyard is a better venue for optical anyway since the distances are so much shorter.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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if you are worried about smashing into trees you could just wire up some ultrasonic parking sensors used on cars to your body, then you would get buzzer going off when you get to close to something (the closer you get the louder it gets), you could even wire it to an audio pass-through for you head phones so you get the warning through them...
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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I'm sure it's expensive but check out this device. Two centimeter positional accuracy and it's already all packaged and ready for use. That's almost too easy. :)

Image

http://www.oxts.com/default.asp?pageRef=118
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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brantlew wrote:I'm sure it's expensive but check out this device. Two centimeter positional accuracy and it's already all packaged and ready for use. That's almost too easy. :)

Image

http://www.oxts.com/default.asp?pageRef=118
Interesting, that is just a GPS tracker in a backpack with built in WiFi, you can get MUCH smaller GPS trackers (I work for a company that makes them) and it would be very easy to use it in a back pack, ours however send data over GSM or WCDMA, I'm not sure but I think out next upcoming model has bluetooth so may be suitable (but there are others that already have bluetooth). Ours are designed to track vehicles and are accurate to within 1meter (not as accurate a 2cm but accurate enough I think)..... but you can probably just use a smart phone with built in GPS and WiFi to do the same thing
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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What I have been doing with my backtop setup is just using a rug and walking barefoot. I have a rug in my living room, that is about 5 feet by 8 feet. Then I made sure there was about a foot of space around that with no obstacles. Walking on this barefoot its very easy to feel once I am touching the tile floor. And surprisingly I played on this for about 30 minutes and did not reach the edge once. But had I gone off the edge, it would have been easy to get myself back into place.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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mAchiNE wrote:Interesting, that is just a GPS tracker in a backpack with built in WiFi, you can get MUCH smaller GPS trackers (I work for a company that makes them) and it would be very easy to use it in a back pack, ours however send data over GSM or WCDMA, I'm not sure but I think out next upcoming model has bluetooth so may be suitable (but there are others that already have bluetooth). Ours are designed to track vehicles and are accurate to within 1meter (not as accurate a 2cm but accurate enough I think)..... but you can probably just use a smart phone with built in GPS and WiFi to do the same thing
Yeah I know. I was just commenting on how this thing already has the accelerometer and GPS integrated. You just plug your computer into it, read off the earth coordinates (2cm accuracy is insane!), and feed those almost directly into the game. How easy is that? Now we just need a cheap DIY project to replicate it. 8-)
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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don't most smart phones have accelerometers in them as well? I can imagine that backpack will be as expensive as a surveyors GPS
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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Most GPS's are pretty crap indoors - so i'd be interested to know what its accuracy was like INSIDE.

I think the lack of an accurate absolute positioning system that works reliably indoors is holding everything back (such as AR) in this area.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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WiredEarp wrote:Most GPS's are pretty crap indoors - so i'd be interested to know what its accuracy was like INSIDE.

I think the lack of an accurate absolute positioning system that works reliably indoors is holding everything back (such as AR) in this area.
Well I can tell you that indoor accuracy entirely depends on what the roof is made from, If you are in a concrete car park then your accuracy will be 0% same with metal a roof, if you are under a wooden or ceramic roof then it will work but accuracy will suffer depending on how thick the roof is weather you are on the 1st floor of a multi story building etc. GPS signals are coming from satellites in the sky so accuracy depends on how many satellites are in the sky above you and how many the tracker can see at any one time (the more the better) and the signal is generally not strong enough to penatrate through most buildings well, all GPS trackers generally are designed to work with clear view of the sky but will sitll function with reduced accuracy with some obstruction. Not an ideal soloution for indoors but for outdoors (like the soccerfield idea we were talking about) it could be utilised quite well I think
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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For indoors you would just use optical - of course this type of solution is going to be quite limited indoors. Maybe if you have a 3 car garage and you scaled the movements so that you were just shuffling your feet to walk you could still use this technique adequately. I'm actually quite interested in how much you can scale the movement and still feel an immersive effect.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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I think theyd be a big market for a terrestrial type GPS where you could put 3 sensors/pingers in set locations then use them to calculate the coordinates accurately.

Really, it would solve so many issues, as it would let you use advanced GPS type positioning inside, without the hassle of optical.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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We seem to have drifted off topic, it seems we are now talking about more of a freedom VR setup rather than an omnidirectional treadmill :?
So to bring this back on topic I recieved an email back from Zorb in China today.
A 2M diameter Water Ball (about 6.5ft) is $220USD and comes with a repair kit, the pump to inflate the ball is another $45USD
From this a guess the 3M Water ball (about 9.8ft) should be under $400USD (I have requested the price for the 3M now as well)

So add to this a paddling pool and you have a passive DIY Virtusphere, I think we could add some thickener to the water in the paddling pool to increase friction making it easiear to walk in the sphere

This setup could work well with a fully wearable VR setup
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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2m would be too small for most considering the movement and wobble of the ball plus a HMD would hit the ball i think. The other big caveats are having to have someone pump up the ball for you and let you out to the usage would be very limited. Great idea on the water thickener though.. what did you have in mind?
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

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Okta wrote:2m would be too small for most considering the movement and wobble of the ball plus a HMD would hit the ball i think. The other big caveats are having to have someone pump up the ball for you and let you out to the usage would be very limited. Great idea on the water thickener though.. what did you have in mind?
I only posted the price for the 2meter Water Ball because that was the only price they got back to me with, however amazingly they emailed me straight back with prices on 2.5M (8.2ft) and 3M (9.8ft) Water Balls and the good news is they are only $250USD and $280USD respectively! :D Add the pump and paddling pool and you have the makings of a Virtusphere for under $400USD. Yes there are drawbacks (needing someone elst to pump up the ball etc) but considering the price I think that it might be worth it, you could set up four of these for under $2000USD and play 4 player death match or 4 player coop! (obviously the cost of mobile VR setup x4 on top of that) plus if we can get this to work it is cheap enought that more people might do it, then we can get to gether a VR game server and play against other people with similar setups :woot

As for thickener something like corn starch might work, will make a bit of a mess but worth trying out I think
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by WiredEarp »

The cool thing about these, is that it would be hard to hurt yourself falling... nice idea using the pool with the thickener...
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by cybereality »

Is anyone else uneasy about strapping a few thousand dollars worth of electronics on your body and then jumping in a pool? Something is not right with this picture.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by mAchiNE »

cybereality wrote:Is anyone else uneasy about strapping a few thousand dollars worth of electronics on your body and then jumping in a pool? Something is not right with this picture.
Yes but inside a waterproof bubble..... no worse than running around in a large space with a few thousand dollars worth of electronics strapped on your body and tripping over and falling onto it, inside the bubble if you fall you will be less likely to damage your equipment I would think...
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by PalmerTech »

Just thought I would let you guys know that I am making a few small baby steps towards making an ODT.

Remember those gravity rollers I found earlier? They are perfect, except for the fact that they come in a very limited set of widths. Even the spurs would result in very steep angles, along with big gaps between the edges.

The solution? Make my own rollers, in exactly the sizes I need! I am going to do some tests with thick walled PVC and steel pipes, along with an assortment of bearings. If I can build 4 rollers as a test, it should be enough to see if they can be mounted well (In terms of closeness and rigidity).
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by brantlew »

PalmerTech wrote:Just thought I would let you guys know that I am making a few small baby steps towards making an ODT.
Cool. The BF3 sim seemed like one of the more viable solutions that was discussed.

I'm also "putting my money where my mouth is" and implementing the WiiSpace idea. Just working on getting data from Wiimote and calibrating the boundaries right now, but everything is going smoothly so far. People were concerned that this did not meet the criteria of an omni-device, so I'll start a new thread when I have something to show.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by mAchiNE »

@Palmer
Cool man, will be good to see how you get on with that, I agree with brantlew that the BF3 ODT does seem like the most usable idea if it can be done at reasonable cost

@Brantlew
How much space do you think you will need minimum to use a setup like that? I'd be interested to build a free walk system but space restraints are a pain in the ass for this kind of thing unless you happen to live in a warehouse ;)
Also I just had a thought, for a freedom VR setup couldn't we just use the accelerometers in the Wiimote to detect what direction we are walking in? (forwards, backwards) we are already able to use them to track turning left and right, and if you use the pedometer activated nunchuck that palmer linked to a few pages back you can detect walking action as well.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by cadcoke5 »

Here are some brain-storming ideas that might have an application for the "walking in a ball" idea. For walking or running, you don' t need to track the user, but rather the ball itself.

A pair of regular optical mice, if placed anywhere on the ball at 90 degrees from each other should be able to track the users walk and pace. If the ball is in water, that may not be a good idea. But, perhaps rollers can be attached in the same locations and use optical encoders on those rollers.

A related idea what would require some image processing is to put some sort of texture or pattern on the ball and then aim a camera at the ball. The video processor would have to keep track of the movement it sees, both linear and rotations.

Another related video processing idea that would require more than a little optical processing is to place some sort of bar-code stickers on the outside of the ball at various locations. Then, the computer can identify the locations of specific bar-codes. It should then be able to extract the absolute position of the ball at any time. But, I don't think this is really necessary. Just relative motion should be fine.

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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by cadcoke5 »

This half-baked idea is in regards to controlling the motion of the ball. Someone else commented that it is difficult to walk inside those giant pool inflatable balls because of the lack of friction. One proposal was to use a more viscous liquid instead of water.

I am trying to think of how to computer-control friction.

#1, Use a shop vacuum and apply a suction device to two points, 90 degrees from each other. The vacuum would run continuously, but at each suction point, a butterfly valve in the suction line opens or closes to allow the vacuum to create friction.

#2, Rather than suction, use air pressure blowing out of the suction device above. Such a device is referred to in industry as an "air caster". These air casters would have to be positioned near the lower portion of the sphere and be spring loaded to apply physical pressure to the sphere. When these air casters are blowing, they would reduce friction and allow the ball to roll.

I prefer idea #2, since there is positive pressure that would not tend to suck in the liquid like a vacuum. However, I have no idea if the amount of friction can be modulated. I.e. it might tend to be very full-on or full-off.

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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by cadcoke5 »

OK, a little more brain-storming for today. These relate to the idea of projecting images on to a large ball with the user inside.

#1) If the inflatable ball idea is used, one of the interesting things about it is that they may be available in white, and allow for rear-projection. This eliminates all the head-mounted display problems with getting a wide field of view. I would suggest applying a dusting of some black spray-paint to the interior (or what ever would stick to the material used) to increase contrast.

One limitation I see with the above is that the ground could not be projected onto from outside. So here is an off-the wall idea, Use a light weight projector stuck to the top interior of the ball. You could also attach some optical systems to track the user's head location. This unit would have rollers on the top, and be held in place by magnets above the sphere. This set of magnets would have to be mounted so it would ride with the vertical motions of the ball as it bounces with each step.

The power would have to be transmitted inductively. I am not sure if this would be incompatible with using some of the standards for wireless video transmission.

#2) Another idea is to use micro-projectors and mount the projectors on the user's helmet so that they project their images on the sphere. Of course at this point you are talking about more than a little power consumption, but not so much that it would require a back-pack unless the computer running the simulation is also on the user. The problem I see with the idea of head-mounted projectors is that the user's head is moving in relation to the sphere. I.e. they would not align correctly unless they were arranged so that each of the projectors emitted their light from the same aperture, or at least, very close to the same aperture.

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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by brantlew »

@Machine: I really don't know at this point, however I think it would be inappropriate for indoor use. Right now I am only focused on outdoor situations and how well the system can scale. I hope that a 10x10 meter area would be sufficient - that would accommodate a typical backyard setup and the resolution at that size is really good. You should be able to detect position changes as small as 1 cm. I've been estimating how much the system will scale without adding lots of extra equipment. I think it can probably go as large as 30x30 meter and still be within stable bluetooth range and have a motion resolution of around 5 cm. At that size you may be able to play perceptional tricks on the player and have them walking in circles instead of hitting boundaries which would be a huge bonus.

I have also considered using the Wiimote inertial system to track position, but it's not dependable enough to trust boundary detection simply with a dead reckoner. I still need an external "absolute" positioning system and optical seems like the most straight forward solution to me. Down the road I might try using an inertial system for small movements coupled with an optical system for auto-correction, but right now I'm just keeping things simple.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by PalmerTech »

Good news! I built my first gravity rollers out of cheap and easily available parts!

They are lightweight, stiff, and almost completely silent. I built them using skateboard bearings and wheels, black ABS pipe, and some nuts and bolts. Depending on how much bulk I buy in, a three foot long roller will cost between $6.75 and $11, with a 6" long roller (The smallest I can see using) would be between $5 and $8.

Unfortunately, the seller sent me wheels that were about half a millimeter smaller than what they claimed. Not a big deal for skating, but makes them a little too small for what I need, so I had to use a single wrap of gaffers tape. I will be buying some sets from other companies, to see if any of them have wheels that really are the size they claim to be/that I need.
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by brantlew »

PalmerTech wrote:Good news! I built my first gravity rollers out of cheap and easily available parts!
That's bad ass!

My rough, ROUGH estimates for a 1 meter radius unit puts that at 20 rollers * $8 * 8 sections * 75% usage = $960. Not bad. Throw in another $1000 for mounting brackets, motors, belts, control boards and we're talking about a $2000 copy of the BF3 sim floor.

Where do you find the time for all this crap !!
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by Synexious »

Are you building triangular rollers? How many do you plan to use?
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Re: Envisioning a DIY CyberCarpet for Omnidirectional Motion

Post by PalmerTech »

@Brantlew: The rollers are actually a little over 2' wide, a bit thicker than the gravity rollers, but not by much. Because of that, it should only need 16 or 17 rollers per section, maybe less (I am considering making the circle plate in the middle a bit bigger). As far as time, goodness knows I do not actually have much of it spare these days. :lol: I only spent about $20 in parts to make two test rollers, it took about 15 minutes to find the right parts online after the initial inspiration hit. I picked up the ABS pipe at Home Depot while I was already there picking up some supplies for my job, and it took another 15 minutes to put together the two rollers when my parts came. Less than an hour! ;)

@Aphro: Yes, I plan on building triangular rollers. No idea when (It might be months). I am also unsure of how big I want to go. My plan right now is to build starting at the longer rollers (3 or or 4 feet or so) and building into shorter rollers (2 feet or so). If I need to, I will make the center plate smaller and build even further in (Maybe even down to 6" rollers), or build the platform out to be larger, with 4, 5, or even 6 foot long rollers. The nice thing about this solution is that you can pretty easily add on to the size!

Now I need to figure out the cheapest possible mounting hardware for these rollers.
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