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Re:Disney Unveils the HoloTile Floor, Inching Us Closer to a... by spyder on Saturday January 27, 2024 @03:26PM (#39159478)
Yep, and by tilting the spinning discs/cylinders you can have omnidirectional control by changing which part of the edge of the rotating cylinder is in contact with the surface above it. You don't need the ultrasound thing posted in the other comment, that patent may be a different path they've also tried.
Re:Disney Unveils the HoloTile Floor, Inching Us Closer to a... by Groxx on Saturday January 27, 2024 @09:00PM (#39161810)
Yeah, I think this is right too. It'd also explain the sound.

Feels like a very mechanically-simple strategy, but hard to make durable / safe from fingers (and detecting "skin" vs "shoe" doesn't seem like something you can make foolproof) / that would hurt to fall onto.

Re:Disney Unveils the HoloTile Floor, Inching Us Closer to a... by Mtinie on Sunday January 28, 2024 @02:32AM (#39163323)
Society says that progress goes forward. Toes? Not always.
Re:Disney Unveils the HoloTile Floor, Inching Us Closer to a... by oatmeal1 on Sunday January 28, 2024 @01:06AM (#39162994)
Beautifully simple that it only has to spin the wheels one direction! I do imagine it has to stop though when the person stops walking.

The drawback of this is that it requires a firm contact point like shoes to work. You wouldn't want to walk in socks on this. You also couldn't have a performer lay directly on the surface and transport them across the stage, nor allow them to have baggy clothing near it. Running would be difficult from a balance perspective, not to mention holding a wheel at a particular tilt would require quite a bit of force if someone runs on it. It's going to have a very particular use case for Disney.