8 ms·

MythBuster's Hyneman Launches IndieGogo to Build VR Shoes Like Mini Treadmills

87 points by evo_9 9y ago

Raphmedia 9y ago
Actual Link : https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jamie-hyneman-s-virtual-reality-electric-shoes-vr#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jamie-hyneman-s-virtual-r...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pavel_lishin 9y ago
I really like that everywhere on the project, they state that it might not work. Many projects promise to deliver no matter what - it's good that Jamie and his team are setting realistic expectations.
- sharpercoder 9y ago
  This is why I will actually do my first donation on KickStarter.
  - Kiro 9y ago
    It's IndieGogo, not Kickstarter.
    - troymc 9y ago
      It's possible they know, and meant Kickstarter :D (But it's unlikely.) (But sometimes it's fun to imagine silly stuff.)
ainiriand 9y ago
You should not back with your money something that rich people is not backing with his own money. Just saying.
drzaiusapelord 9y ago
VR will succeed because it doesn't involve a whole suit to make work. That's why the Vive and Oculus ship with only two controllers and a HMD. No glove or shoes to be fitted correctly, put on/off, cleaned, etc. This is also why the Vive Tracker won't ever go mainstream for gaming. People aren't sticking 3 large sensors on their body outside of edge uses cases and now you have 5 things to remember to recharge. If good full-body tracking comes to mainstream VR, we'll be doing it with cameras, not wearables. This is absolutely the wrong way to go about this. Its clear that Hyneman is trying to ride the VR hype to sell motorized shoes, which sound more interesting to me as a mode of transportation than anything having to do with VR. Especially if you can put in Segway-like logic in them to help with balance. On the flip side, considering how long walks are most people's only form of exercise its probably a bad idea all around like those hoverboards or that new mini-segway. If I bought any of these I'd be cutting a lot of calories I'm burning and lowering physical activity drastically. Short range travel should be by foot and losing that will just make our obesity epidemic worse.
- Raphmedia 9y ago
  > Its clear that Hyneman is trying to ride the VR hype to sell motorized shoes Those are about being able to walk without moving. Yes, the shoes will be able to move you around but that's for centering the user back in the middle of the VR play area. Outdoor / locomotion use is phase 3 which is "dream phase" and likely will never happen. Anyway, this is a moot point since this crowdfunding is for prototype v.7 and not even for a product.
- eplanit 9y ago
  "Short range travel should be by foot and losing that will just make our obesity epidemic worse." Yes -- the people in Wall-E. It has already begun without yet having autonomous shoes. That movie is frighteningly predictive.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    Speaking of which, I could really go for some cupcake in a cup right now...~ But I live in America. Most short range travel doesn't even get you to the nearest grocer. If you can actually get anywhere by walking, you live in the urban core of a major city. The Axiom is--by virtue of it being a cruise ship--essentially an ultra-dense city with a giant propulsion system strapped to it. It's probably around 4 km long, if you include the narrow pointy bits, with some minor convolution of the major pedestrian travel routes. In the early "cabin fever" years of the cruise, walking around everywhere was likely a common occurrence. But as new generations replace the old, distance expectations readjust. 100m becomes a long way to walk, because it is 2.5% the length of your world, and might take you two whole minutes if you stroll leisurely enough. Those are minutes you would have to be watching the interactive teledramas of the ship's integrated entertainment system on your tiny wearable screen, when it could be on a much larger, more immersive display! The hoverchairs of the Axiom weren't just about not walking; they were also about being connected to the network 24-7, like Borg or Cybermen. Recall how extraordinary it was for Wall-E to get just two of the humans to notice that something interesting and different was happening away from their screens, in the real world. And they were excited about it, because they had never meaningfully explored the "real" world in their entire lifetime ("I didn't know we had a pool!"), so it was all new to them, and rendered in perfect photorealistic quality, with no level qeometry errors or frame-dropping. Ready Player One is coming to theater screens soon, and if there were any justice in the world, Snow Crash would be, too. Humanity has this dream of connecting everyone to everyone else through the network, and it also has a nightmare where the network is an addictive drug, and everyone becomes a netjunkie and lets the real world become a barren wasteland. Distance sucks. The great burden of civilization is that moving goods around takes time, because between where they are and where we want them to be, there's just so much distance. The mere proposal that treadmill shoes should exist for VR is an indication that world programmers are doing a stupid thing. They are importing the thing that many people hate about the real world, and making it a hard rule of the simulated world, too. You would be better off strapping a vibrating belt to your waist; let it buzz whenever you fire the thrusters on your powered exoskeleton, and give yourself a tiny shock whenever you activate a teleporter or traverse a portal. People want instant travel, and you don't need simulated walking for that. The network generates a new distance expectation. The world is now zero meters across. Stepping from New York to London is a journey of milliseconds rather than miles. Whether the world is 4 km long, or 40000 km around, walking just can't compete with that. If you can go anywhere interesting faster than you can walk to your mailbox, pedestrian travel is just doomed. Even mechanized travel is doomed. That's why delivery services like Amazon are booming. For brick-and-mortar stores, you have to spend 15 minutes on traversing distance before you can even start shopping. And that store might not even have what you want.
rhcom2 9y ago
I can see it how it would work for forward/backward movement but not how it could possibly work for lateral movement like pushing off of one foot.
- jpfed 9y ago
  To deal with that, they'd have to do some spherical drive/ trackball sort of thing.
- CharlesW 9y ago
  Miniature Mecanum wheels[1][2] might be interesting for this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecanum_wheel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecanum_wheel [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tmiu1wpp_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tmiu1wpp_E
  - dmazin 9y ago
    I remember Jamie talking about how much he loves his mecanum wheel forklift...
mrfusion 9y ago
Questions (the video didn’t answer) Will it work on carpet? What stops you from slipping? What holds you in place? Does the motor move you backwards to match any forward movement? Btw once we get all these vr accessories were really going to need wireless charging and a giant mat to dump all your stuff on when you’re done playing to charge it.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  One more question: lateral stability? Ok a few more questions... When you try to jump or crouch, or sidestep, etc... are you going to snap an ankle? Can you jump in this? Quickly spin around?
- criddell 9y ago
  If you have to put everything on a mat, I wouldn't called that wireless charging. That's like saying you can have a wireless network connection as long as your laptop is sitting on a special pad. I think it has to work over a range of at least a few meters before I'd call it wireless.
  - spullara 9y ago
    My 10-yr old daughter described the current form of "wireless charging" as using the shortest possible cord.
    - tekromancr 9y ago
      That's incredibly insightful. The way I see lots of people charge their phones, you have a long cable so you can continue using it when it's charging. with the wireless charging, you have to leave it locked in place while it charges at 500ma for hours. It's neat at starbucks where I can pick up a quick extra few percent on my battery bar, but otherwise pretty useless.
      - balfirevic 9y ago
        It's not useless. It's great for charging overnight while sleeping, without the hassle of plugging in the cable before you go to sleep.
catshirt 9y ago
so, they're using tech they built to help you walk faster... to make shoes that don't let you walk anywhere. science! hope it works out, seems like an interesting solution.
- vlasev 9y ago
  What speeds you up forwards can probably be used to slow you down if pointed backwards
DigitalJack 9y ago
Seem awfully weird to me to have marketing teams and people working on cad designs when the basic concept hasn't even been proven in 6 prototypes. at least the VR application of the concept of motorized shoes hasn't been proven. I guess this is just a "stepping stone" if you'll pardon the expression, toward a general purpose motorized shoe. So if this VR aspect is just a side trip on their grand scheme, maybe it makes more sense to have such a team in place working on what they are.
- stuntkite 9y ago
  I think "Marketing Team" is a pretty generous term. This is one of those dudes using inkscape/the gimp and they got someone on UpWork to cad up a shoe from a sketch. Maybe did it themselves, but don't know how to go get some free substance materials to render that with a fabric and rubber look that would light properly. There is nothing about this that says professional design or marketing folks are involved. No one seems to even know what a color wheel is or basic rules of text readability. How many fonts did they download? Shit looks like a 90's rave flier. I'm all for DIY, whacky hardware projects (have a couple myself), and MythBustin'. But I think after they finished prototype number six everyone went over to Cody's house all drunk and went Old Man Ham on it. Jesus christ guys, get on Shutterstock and buy some templates. EDIT: I totally just realized that this project is the engineer equivalent of a neighborhood dad garage band. Rock on brothers. Rock on.
stuntkite 9y ago
This kind of reeks of vaporware and that's sort of the pitch I guess. Hardware ideas are crowdfuneded all the time that are kind of lofty, but I felt like the common thinking at this point is that you really should have taken the risks to prove the thing plus show that you could potentially build it at scale before funding. There are so many ways that the funding of this project can go totally sideways (unlike the shoes!). It even feels weird to have everyone's favorite myth walrus promoting something so vapory. He's sort of known for being a stodgy, no nonsense guy in terms of tech. This all seems tone deaf. Maybe the shoe is like tunnel vision VR before we had the oculus. The Ah-ha moment with VR was accelerometers, they at least kickstarted with a paper one you could start to use no matter what! The backpack and axe with whacky cannon fuse might satisfy some Bustin' fans, it leaves me pretty flat. The branding is horror show gawdy too. Promise me a DIY kit where I can play with the terrible shoes idea myself to really help you get there. Jamie! Your audience for a thing like this is builders like you! Sure you can get some MB cash-in with this but if what I'm paying for is future skates, give me some ruddy future skates so at least I can break my neck with you! Get me some brushless DCs with nice aluminum hubs and some 3D printed tread parts. Release with a community edition with STL files to open up the experimentation. Either that or just go get a bank loan like any other person and take some risks on something you believe in. I do see from the outshot why your'd prefer to risk someone else's money. It's all pretty silly. But if you don't buy it, why should we?
- Retric 9y ago
  “It might work. It might not work. We’ll know soon.” Is IMO a completely reasonable stance. People putting up money are making the bet that it's a good idea, and can either buy an actual product eventually, or if it turns out to be a bad idea nobody is trying to manufacture all those "pre-orders". The benefit is without needing to ramp up production you can just focus on the Research side of R & D.
  - stuntkite 9y ago
    I do not agree with you stance on crowd funding in this instance. I also think the rewards are dumb, ugly, lazy and they could be engaging better with the audience that is actually interested in the skates.
chaostheory 9y ago
This is still the best VR solution to running and walking, and it's already shipped. http://www.virtuix.com/ http://www.virtuix.com/ I just don't understand why they seem to no longer sell to consumers though. I'm not sure I get Jamie's project.
- troymc 9y ago
  Have you tried those Virtuix things?
  - chaostheory 9y ago
    Yes. Another problem is that back then it used Kinect. Not sure what it uses now. It's not perfect but it worked, at least a few years back.
Glyptodon 9y ago
Maybe someone will one-up and do some with a tread made of ball bearings.
xellisx 9y ago
"Estimated Operating weight up to 215 lbs"
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  c. 15 stone, c. 100kg
spyder 9y ago
Prior art (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5hPyHxrz94 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5hPyHxrz94
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
I like it. The link in the comments there to https://www.3d.run/ https://www.3d.run/ looks good too. It doesn't seem far from those Cybershoes to the VR Shoes, like it says if you're just allowing linear motion they're basically reverse treadmills (or just how I look on rollerskates!). Snap on shoe based personal transport, like Heelies with motors, I can see working but without some very complex Mecanum style wheels I can't see the VR Shoe being functional any time soon (unless they have a killer new concept they've not told us about yet). I can't see one feeling balanced in this sort of get-up.

87 points by evo_9 9y ago

Actual Link : https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jamie-hyneman-s-virtual-reality-electric-shoes-vr#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jamie-hyneman-s-virtual-r...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pavel_lishin 9y ago

I really like that everywhere on the project, they state that it might not work. Many projects promise to deliver no matter what - it's good that Jamie and his team are setting realistic expectations.

sharpercoder 9y ago
This is why I will actually do my first donation on KickStarter.
- Kiro 9y ago
  It's IndieGogo, not Kickstarter.
  - troymc 9y ago
    It's possible they know, and meant Kickstarter :D (But it's unlikely.) (But sometimes it's fun to imagine silly stuff.)

ainiriand 9y ago

You should not back with your money something that rich people is not backing with his own money. Just saying.

drzaiusapelord 9y ago

VR will succeed because it doesn't involve a whole suit to make work. That's why the Vive and Oculus ship with only two controllers and a HMD. No glove or shoes to be fitted correctly, put on/off, cleaned, etc. This is also why the Vive Tracker won't ever go mainstream for gaming. People aren't sticking 3 large sensors on their body outside of edge uses cases and now you have 5 things to remember to recharge. If good full-body tracking comes to mainstream VR, we'll be doing it with cameras, not wearables. This is absolutely the wrong way to go about this. Its clear that Hyneman is trying to ride the VR hype to sell motorized shoes, which sound more interesting to me as a mode of transportation than anything having to do with VR. Especially if you can put in Segway-like logic in them to help with balance. On the flip side, considering how long walks are most people's only form of exercise its probably a bad idea all around like those hoverboards or that new mini-segway. If I bought any of these I'd be cutting a lot of calories I'm burning and lowering physical activity drastically. Short range travel should be by foot and losing that will just make our obesity epidemic worse.

Raphmedia 9y ago
> Its clear that Hyneman is trying to ride the VR hype to sell motorized shoes Those are about being able to walk without moving. Yes, the shoes will be able to move you around but that's for centering the user back in the middle of the VR play area. Outdoor / locomotion use is phase 3 which is "dream phase" and likely will never happen. Anyway, this is a moot point since this crowdfunding is for prototype v.7 and not even for a product.
eplanit 9y ago
"Short range travel should be by foot and losing that will just make our obesity epidemic worse." Yes -- the people in Wall-E. It has already begun without yet having autonomous shoes. That movie is frighteningly predictive.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  Speaking of which, I could really go for some cupcake in a cup right now...~ But I live in America. Most short range travel doesn't even get you to the nearest grocer. If you can actually get anywhere by walking, you live in the urban core of a major city. The Axiom is--by virtue of it being a cruise ship--essentially an ultra-dense city with a giant propulsion system strapped to it. It's probably around 4 km long, if you include the narrow pointy bits, with some minor convolution of the major pedestrian travel routes. In the early "cabin fever" years of the cruise, walking around everywhere was likely a common occurrence. But as new generations replace the old, distance expectations readjust. 100m becomes a long way to walk, because it is 2.5% the length of your world, and might take you two whole minutes if you stroll leisurely enough. Those are minutes you would have to be watching the interactive teledramas of the ship's integrated entertainment system on your tiny wearable screen, when it could be on a much larger, more immersive display! The hoverchairs of the Axiom weren't just about not walking; they were also about being connected to the network 24-7, like Borg or Cybermen. Recall how extraordinary it was for Wall-E to get just two of the humans to notice that something interesting and different was happening away from their screens, in the real world. And they were excited about it, because they had never meaningfully explored the "real" world in their entire lifetime ("I didn't know we had a pool!"), so it was all new to them, and rendered in perfect photorealistic quality, with no level qeometry errors or frame-dropping. Ready Player One is coming to theater screens soon, and if there were any justice in the world, Snow Crash would be, too. Humanity has this dream of connecting everyone to everyone else through the network, and it also has a nightmare where the network is an addictive drug, and everyone becomes a netjunkie and lets the real world become a barren wasteland. Distance sucks. The great burden of civilization is that moving goods around takes time, because between where they are and where we want them to be, there's just so much distance. The mere proposal that treadmill shoes should exist for VR is an indication that world programmers are doing a stupid thing. They are importing the thing that many people hate about the real world, and making it a hard rule of the simulated world, too. You would be better off strapping a vibrating belt to your waist; let it buzz whenever you fire the thrusters on your powered exoskeleton, and give yourself a tiny shock whenever you activate a teleporter or traverse a portal. People want instant travel, and you don't need simulated walking for that. The network generates a new distance expectation. The world is now zero meters across. Stepping from New York to London is a journey of milliseconds rather than miles. Whether the world is 4 km long, or 40000 km around, walking just can't compete with that. If you can go anywhere interesting faster than you can walk to your mailbox, pedestrian travel is just doomed. Even mechanized travel is doomed. That's why delivery services like Amazon are booming. For brick-and-mortar stores, you have to spend 15 minutes on traversing distance before you can even start shopping. And that store might not even have what you want.

rhcom2 9y ago

I can see it how it would work for forward/backward movement but not how it could possibly work for lateral movement like pushing off of one foot.

jpfed 9y ago
To deal with that, they'd have to do some spherical drive/ trackball sort of thing.
CharlesW 9y ago
Miniature Mecanum wheels[1][2] might be interesting for this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecanum_wheel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecanum_wheel [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tmiu1wpp_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tmiu1wpp_E
- dmazin 9y ago
  I remember Jamie talking about how much he loves his mecanum wheel forklift...

mrfusion 9y ago

Questions (the video didn’t answer) Will it work on carpet? What stops you from slipping? What holds you in place? Does the motor move you backwards to match any forward movement? Btw once we get all these vr accessories were really going to need wireless charging and a giant mat to dump all your stuff on when you’re done playing to charge it.

QAPereo 9y ago
One more question: lateral stability? Ok a few more questions... When you try to jump or crouch, or sidestep, etc... are you going to snap an ankle? Can you jump in this? Quickly spin around?
criddell 9y ago
If you have to put everything on a mat, I wouldn't called that wireless charging. That's like saying you can have a wireless network connection as long as your laptop is sitting on a special pad. I think it has to work over a range of at least a few meters before I'd call it wireless.
- spullara 9y ago
  My 10-yr old daughter described the current form of "wireless charging" as using the shortest possible cord.
  - tekromancr 9y ago
    That's incredibly insightful. The way I see lots of people charge their phones, you have a long cable so you can continue using it when it's charging. with the wireless charging, you have to leave it locked in place while it charges at 500ma for hours. It's neat at starbucks where I can pick up a quick extra few percent on my battery bar, but otherwise pretty useless.
    - balfirevic 9y ago
      It's not useless. It's great for charging overnight while sleeping, without the hassle of plugging in the cable before you go to sleep.

catshirt 9y ago

so, they're using tech they built to help you walk faster... to make shoes that don't let you walk anywhere. science! hope it works out, seems like an interesting solution.

vlasev 9y ago
What speeds you up forwards can probably be used to slow you down if pointed backwards

DigitalJack 9y ago

Seem awfully weird to me to have marketing teams and people working on cad designs when the basic concept hasn't even been proven in 6 prototypes. at least the VR application of the concept of motorized shoes hasn't been proven. I guess this is just a "stepping stone" if you'll pardon the expression, toward a general purpose motorized shoe. So if this VR aspect is just a side trip on their grand scheme, maybe it makes more sense to have such a team in place working on what they are.

stuntkite 9y ago
I think "Marketing Team" is a pretty generous term. This is one of those dudes using inkscape/the gimp and they got someone on UpWork to cad up a shoe from a sketch. Maybe did it themselves, but don't know how to go get some free substance materials to render that with a fabric and rubber look that would light properly. There is nothing about this that says professional design or marketing folks are involved. No one seems to even know what a color wheel is or basic rules of text readability. How many fonts did they download? Shit looks like a 90's rave flier. I'm all for DIY, whacky hardware projects (have a couple myself), and MythBustin'. But I think after they finished prototype number six everyone went over to Cody's house all drunk and went Old Man Ham on it. Jesus christ guys, get on Shutterstock and buy some templates. EDIT: I totally just realized that this project is the engineer equivalent of a neighborhood dad garage band. Rock on brothers. Rock on.

stuntkite 9y ago

This kind of reeks of vaporware and that's sort of the pitch I guess. Hardware ideas are crowdfuneded all the time that are kind of lofty, but I felt like the common thinking at this point is that you really should have taken the risks to prove the thing plus show that you could potentially build it at scale before funding. There are so many ways that the funding of this project can go totally sideways (unlike the shoes!). It even feels weird to have everyone's favorite myth walrus promoting something so vapory. He's sort of known for being a stodgy, no nonsense guy in terms of tech. This all seems tone deaf. Maybe the shoe is like tunnel vision VR before we had the oculus. The Ah-ha moment with VR was accelerometers, they at least kickstarted with a paper one you could start to use no matter what! The backpack and axe with whacky cannon fuse might satisfy some Bustin' fans, it leaves me pretty flat. The branding is horror show gawdy too. Promise me a DIY kit where I can play with the terrible shoes idea myself to really help you get there. Jamie! Your audience for a thing like this is builders like you! Sure you can get some MB cash-in with this but if what I'm paying for is future skates, give me some ruddy future skates so at least I can break my neck with you! Get me some brushless DCs with nice aluminum hubs and some 3D printed tread parts. Release with a community edition with STL files to open up the experimentation. Either that or just go get a bank loan like any other person and take some risks on something you believe in. I do see from the outshot why your'd prefer to risk someone else's money. It's all pretty silly. But if you don't buy it, why should we?

Retric 9y ago
“It might work. It might not work. We’ll know soon.” Is IMO a completely reasonable stance. People putting up money are making the bet that it's a good idea, and can either buy an actual product eventually, or if it turns out to be a bad idea nobody is trying to manufacture all those "pre-orders". The benefit is without needing to ramp up production you can just focus on the Research side of R & D.
- stuntkite 9y ago
  I do not agree with you stance on crowd funding in this instance. I also think the rewards are dumb, ugly, lazy and they could be engaging better with the audience that is actually interested in the skates.

chaostheory 9y ago

This is still the best VR solution to running and walking, and it's already shipped. http://www.virtuix.com/ http://www.virtuix.com/ I just don't understand why they seem to no longer sell to consumers though. I'm not sure I get Jamie's project.

troymc 9y ago
Have you tried those Virtuix things?
- chaostheory 9y ago
  Yes. Another problem is that back then it used Kinect. Not sure what it uses now. It's not perfect but it worked, at least a few years back.

Glyptodon 9y ago

Maybe someone will one-up and do some with a tread made of ball bearings.

xellisx 9y ago

"Estimated Operating weight up to 215 lbs"

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
c. 15 stone, c. 100kg

spyder 9y ago

Prior art (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5hPyHxrz94 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5hPyHxrz94

pbhjpbhj 9y ago

I like it. The link in the comments there to https://www.3d.run/ https://www.3d.run/ looks good too. It doesn't seem far from those Cybershoes to the VR Shoes, like it says if you're just allowing linear motion they're basically reverse treadmills (or just how I look on rollerskates!). Snap on shoe based personal transport, like Heelies with motors, I can see working but without some very complex Mecanum style wheels I can't see the VR Shoe being functional any time soon (unless they have a killer new concept they've not told us about yet). I can't see one feeling balanced in this sort of get-up.