Stompz - Wearable, Wireless VR Locomotion

This is the kind of input i was thinking of the other days. I was wondering what sort of input is best for walking pass that 15'x15' physical wall in the Lighthouse system. I was thinking an input involving the feet would be perfect but i haven't seen any out there and now this!! Developers have talked about moving the "volume" with directional pad in 360 but that can cause sickness while standing when you turn. Also, with one hand on the controller, it limits your ability to do things with both hands. That's why i thought of an input system involving the feet because by using the feet to move around, you're free to use both hands to do other things in the virtual world which is important. You can't have one hand to move the thumbstick while the other to do other things such as shooting in the virtual world. It just doesn't seem right.

@reptilexcq

if that's the case then just strap the left vive controller to your foot and set any motion to W.

should be pretty much the same effect.

"OculusRiftRocks" wrote:
@reptilexcq

if that's the case then just strap the left vive controller to your foot and set any motion to W.

should be pretty much the same effect.

That's lame.

Hey guys,

Here is our response to a backer that asked if Stompz would work with Lighthouse.

"Rather than see the Lighthouse (or Oculus' position tracking technology) as an obstacle for our wearable locomotion tech, we actually see them working together quite well! Stompz will allow you to safely run through these VR experiences and then use absolute positional tracking to duck, dodge crouch and jump with 1:1 accuracy."

Link:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stompz/stompz-the-world-of-virtual-reality-at-your-feet/comments

I already posted on your reddit post, but I had an additional look on the internet. Hardwarewise, I cannot understand why these are so expensive, since I assume they have only accelerometers in them. I checked out these on AliBaba as a reference hardware http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb ... +bluetooth
Could you not adapt your middleware to some of those. I think people would be happy to pay for a programme that enables cheap wireless and lighter pedometers to be used instead?

"konstantin_lozev" wrote:
I already posted on your reddit post, but I had an additional look on the internet. Hardwarewise, I cannot understand why these are so expensive, since I assume they have only accelerometers in them. I checked out these on AliBaba as a reference hardware http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb ... +bluetooth
Could you not adapt your middleware to some of those. I think people would be happy to pay for a programme that enables cheap wireless and lighter pedometers to be used instead?

Hey Konstantin,

I believe we responded to your Reddit post also, but bringing a new device to market isn't cheap. Sourcing components, creating the circuitry, creating the enclosure, gaining approval certifications and making the hardware compatible with multiple platforms gets expensive. Our original design used a low cost accelerometer like the ones you found on Alibaba and we realized many limitations on how it could be used.


Re-purposing existing hardware comes with a whole new set of problems by the way.

Just acting as a pedometer is not nearly enough to create an acceptable input device. In order to register great incremental walking to running inputs we needed something with much higher fidelity. We opted to use a high-end IMU (9-axis) in order to make this happen as well as to allow many use cases other than just walking and running (like skiing, skateboarding)



This also enabled us to allow multiple new modes so users can drive cars, fly airplanes, and allow StompzVR to be used with fitness bicycles, etc.

Finally, just to wrap it up before I go on a long rant about the detail that goes into manufacture, creating hardware in small scales (where 1,000 is small and 10,000 is, well, also pretty small) means that each device is that much more expensive. Since we are essentially creating 3 devices (2 Wearable sensors and 1 USB Receiver for greatest compatibility) instead of just one device, the cost to us is tripled.

We've done quite a bit of work to create our current prototype that is optimized for VR. There are many examples of cheap electronics on Alibaba, and one day we'd like to be just as cheap, but until we get to mass manufacture we are paying premium for each batch. We are on Kickstarter hoping the community will help us take the first steps to get to these next stages of development/manufacture.

Oh, so it's actually accelerometer + gyro + mangnetometer, so driftless 6DOF? I did not see many feet gestures that would have required that, so I assumed that was only accelerometer. I would have thought there would be many, many more use scenarios than simply tracking your feet stomping with such IMU. It is basically even better than a wiimote in terms of IMU, so could be added to wireless guns, gesture recognitions, maybe even some limited simple usage scenarios of 1:1 tracking without positional tracking. Would it not be better then to be able to buy also one IMU, also, the wiimote managed to gain popularity even though it required batteries to operate, so no built-in battery.

"konstantin_lozev" wrote:
Oh, so it's actually accelerometer + gyro + mangnetometer, so driftless 6DOF? I did not see many feet gestures that would have required that, so I assumed that was only accelerometer. I would have thought there would be many, many more use scenarios than simply tracking your feet stomping with such IMU. It is basically even better than a wiimote in terms of IMU, so could be added to wireless guns, gesture recognitions, maybe even some limited simple usage scenarios of 1:1 tracking without positional tracking. Would it not be better then to be able to buy also one IMU, also, the wiimote managed to gain popularity even though it required batteries to operate, so no built-in battery.

Hi konstantin,

Yes, it is a 9 DOF IMU. We included the Gyro and Compass (magnetometer) to allow moves such as skiing, pedaling, and detached head and body walking (i.e. no head steering).

The IMU does have its limitations which is why we're focusing on foot tracking. Hand tracking is honestly better done using absolute tracking like with the lighthouse, STEM (Wiimote is a watered-down example of this) or whatever Oculus is working on. Foot tracking is a different beast because it requires interpretation rather than absolute tracking. For example: I need to interpret when someone wants to walk without letting them actually walk in order to save them from having to walk into a wall.

We have a built-in battery that is rechargeable.

Thanks,

MattStompz

Ok, thanks, fair enough, then. With those capabilities built in, I would still think that there would be more usage scenarios that people could have been more interested in than putting those on their feet...

Would these be usable in an omnidirectional treadmill setup?