From: Ian Feldberg Subject: Re: TECH: Moving Surface simulating free motion over ground Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 15:22:50 -0400 Organization: JHU/APL As far as I know, research in this area is hampered by the fact that omni-directional treadmills are pretty hard (and expensive) to make. One neat thing is the work that Hiroo Iwata (iwata@kz.tsukuba.ac.jp) and Takashi Fujii are doing at the University of Tsukuba on a system called the Virtual Perambulator. The user wears low-friction sandals and operates within a circular frame much like a hula-hoop. They presented the paper at VRAIS 96 and I think they were at SIGGRAPH in 95. - Ian Ian Feldberg [Iwata, H. and Fujii, T. (1996). Virtual Perambulator: A Novel Interface Device for Locomotino in Virtual Environment. In Proceedings of Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium, VRAIS '96, (pp. 60-65 ). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press. Also see URL: http://intron.kz.tsukuba.ac.jp/ Home page for Iwata's Lab at University of Tsukuba. There is also a description of the Virtual Perambulator from SIGGRAPH '95 at: http://www.flsig.org/S95/COMUNITY/PERAMBUL/PERAMBUL.HTL -T.E.]