Disney offers an elegant solution to VR’s movement problem | TechCrunch

HoloTile — which recently made its YouTube debut at the end of a video honoring Disney Research fellow Lanny Smoot — is an extremely clever and honestly quite elegant solution to some of these issues.

The system is composed of hundreds of small, round “tiles” that look to be about the size of a silver dollar. Each serve as a kind of mini, omnidirectional treadmill. Working together, their only task is to stop the walker from leaving the pad.

“I can walk on this omni directional floor in any direction I want,” Smoot says in the video. “It will automatically do whatever it needs to have me stay on the floor. And what’s amazing about this is multiple people can be on it and all walking independently. They can walk in virtual reality, and so many other things.”