Virtual Floor On The Horizon
Hiroo Iwata–developer of the robot tiles seen above–has created what will one day be a virtual floor at a VR lab at the University of Tsukuba in Japan. The Robot Tiles are covered with a conductive fabric that is able to detect the direction you are walking and bring the blocks in place in front of your feet.
As they are this is not very functional but with some work these could potentially be a seamless, infinite floor. In a virtual reality environment this could allow you to realistically feel like you were walking from California to New York while remaining in a relatively small room.
Once these became more efficient and usable they could even create different textured blocks or blocks with varying densities so that if in your virtual environment you walked from a street to the grass you would feel the difference below your feet.
