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A metaphor for life, I guess. Jeremy Hsu writes in Popular Science that Hiroo Iwata of the University of Tsukuba in Japan has developed robotic tiles that sense what direction a user is going in and move ahead to provide a place to step. With further development, it could be used in virtual reality simulators in order to imitate movement over distance:
The robot tiles emerged as the brainchild of Hiroo Iwata, a virtual reality researcher at the University of Tsukuba in Japan. A touch-sensitive conductive fabric covers each robot and gauges the pressure applied by a walking person’s foot, which goes toward predicting the next step.
Ultrasonic sensors also help relay position and orientation of each tile back to a central computer that acts as the conductor. It’s an oddly serene robotic ballet, even when two tiles have queued up to move down the line.
Video at the link.
Image: DigInfo Video News
