Four and a half years ago, George Burger was watching his son play Call of Duty, and thought that it’d be great if he would be able to run around instead of just sitting while playing video games. When he discovered that there weren’t any omnidirectional treadmills on the market, then he decided to build one himself.
This resulted in the InfinAdeck, which was his second prototype of the omnidirectional treadmill and it was a surprise hit at SVVRCon. George describes it as being like a tank tread with each tread being it’s own Y-direction treadmill running 90-degrees perpendicular to the main, X-direction treadmill.
George talks about the process of designing and building this second prototype, and what’s next in terms of designing an automatic control mechanism. He had shown earlier prototypes on the Meant to be Seen 3D forums, and had even been in contact with Palmer Luckey about his progress.
Finally, he talks about how InfinAdeck compares to the Virtuix Omni as well as his next steps in designing the next iteration.
Reddit discussion here.
TOPICS
- 0:00 – Intro & the InfinAdeck omnidirectional project started 4.5 years ago. Inspired by watching son play Call of Duty. Worked on it for a year, and made an original prototype. Designed 2nd prototype and started building it in October 2013. It’s a prototype, and it’s over designed and too big. But now know what it takes to build the next iteration
- 1:42 – Describe what’s happening with the two conveyor belts. Difficult to describe, but it’s like a tank treadmill with 90-degree treadmills
- 2:26 – Able to turn while walking and how does the control mechanism work. Two motors X and the transverse Y motor. Two omniwheels and that it’s geared different. Uses noisy parts, and will be different. Motors are controlled by a motor controller, and the control mechanism isn’t finished yet.
- 4:08 – There’s manual controls that he’s using at the moment.
- 4:47 – Has anyone fallen down? No. No one has ever fallen down.
- 5:15 – What did you learn from this prototype then? Too big. Too heavy. Too overdeisgned. Will design the next version with a computer.
- 6:04 – At what point did you realize that this would be great for virtual reality? Envisioned that it’d be like a CAVE, but with televisions. Got onto Meant to be Seen, and showed prototype, but people weren’t interested. Decided to lay low. Couldn’t get engineering help from others, and decided to be quiet and develop it.
- 7:39 – What was Palmer Luckey’s reaction to it? He loved it. Had control suggestions, and wants to buy one. Doc_Ok wants to help with the control mechanism.
- 8:24 – Has anyone used VR with it yet? Not yet. Need to have the control mechanism in place.
- 8:58 – Who is the target demographic for this? Everyone. It was designed for mass production. Perhaps military, medical police officers and even gamers. Need to know how big and how fast should it go. Never as portable as the Virtuix Omni, but they’re not competing against them. At opposite ends of the spectrum.
- 10:07 – Sounds like this would be great for a higher tier where you have a dedicated space for VR. Don’t need a full room, just enough space for the InfinAdeck.
- 11:16 – What are the dimensions. 7′ x 7′, but with a 60-inch space in the middle. Need to keep them in the center.
- 12:01 – What’s the speed limit? Could make it go 10 mph in next iteration. This one was meant for jogging at around 3.5 mph. Depends on the technology for how fast it’ll go. The purpose of this prototype was to figure out what would be needed for the next iteration. Purpose of it was over before SVVRCon, and getting to show it was a bonus.
Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:11.897] George Burger: My name is George Berger. The Infinidec is an omnidirectional treadmill. I first started the project about four and a half years ago. I did it just for fun. I was watching my son play, I believe it was, Call of Duty. And it seemed like it'd be a lot more fun if the kids were, you know, actually in it. I think it was a Japanese map there. So, I went around, I figured you'd find them, you know. Looked all over, couldn't find anything. So, I said, well, what the heck, I'll do it myself. So, you know, creating things is my job anyway. So, I just sort of do that to get away from my main job. So, worked on it for about a year. Came up with a design I really liked. Made an original prototype. It worked. Well, it really wasn't good enough to be used, but the concept that I was trying to prove worked, worked. So I started designing a second one, and I started building it about October of 13. And I finished it about a month and a half ago, and that's the one that people are seeing now. It took about, what, three months to build it. And it's the original prototype, so its purpose is to be used, but it's over-designed, it's over-big, it's overweight, it's over everything. So now that I have it, now I know how to build the final one.
[00:01:43.288] Kent Bye: I see. And so, kind of describe to me what's happening with this conveyor belt in one direction, but also perpendicular to that direction. What's actually happening when people are on this?
[00:01:51.416] George Burger: Yeah, that's a good question. As a matter of fact, I was talking to another gentleman. I challenged him to explain it to someone without using your hands. He tried for about 15 minutes and finally failed. Sometimes I try to call it a tank tread. and that the main tread is the main treadmill, but each tread itself is a smaller treadmill going 90 degrees to the main one. So it's a treadmill of treadmills. I, you know, it's something you have to see it.
[00:02:28.170] Kent Bye: But what you're able to do with the user interaction is that you're walking on it, and you're able to sort of turn a 45 degree angle. And so you're walking diagonally. And so somehow you're altering the speed of the perpendicular treadmill at the same time that you're still continuing the main tank treadmill. So maybe describe to me, how is that happening?
[00:02:47.655] George Burger: Well, it happens because there's two independent motors. The X is the main treadmill. That's what we call it. The transverse treadmills is the Y. And it has little omni-wheels that allow it to connect to the X-treadmill, but it's geared different than the X-treadmill. Oh, and another thing about the one that you're seeing now, since it was a research project, I did it with steel sprockets and roller chain, which both of those are very noisy. So it's not too bad, but it's going to be a lot different when it's finished. The noise should almost all go away. The motors are both controlled by a motor controller right now. The controller interface that allows the user on it to be what controls the motors was not finished. I wasn't able to get it finished in time. Ultimately, it'll either be mechanical or an electrical input, but the person himself, his position, his movement, his balance, will go into the computer, an algorithm will spit out the proper things for the motors to do. And I'm sure we'll have a safety feature in there too, something to hold on to him to make sure he's not in any danger. But that's where we'll probably be going from here.
[00:04:08.933] Kent Bye: I see, and so right now you're manually doing that, is that correct?
[00:04:13.056] George Burger: Manually? Yes, that's... I had a manual system that I've had for several years, since the one we wanted to use wasn't ready. We just grabbed that out of my garage and stuck that on it, so it looks like I'm spinning records on the side or something, getting people to go X and Y, which... For me, it's difficult. It's like patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time, so it makes for some interesting rides right now. This is a one-time thing, by the way. It will never be like this again. I see.
[00:04:48.540] Kent Bye: Now, has anybody fallen down here?
[00:04:50.602] George Burger: No, not fallen down, thank God, but today we decided to see where we're going to get into the computer and slow the maximum speed down just to, you know, make it that much better.
[00:05:02.650] Kent Bye: I see, yeah. So I'm curious, have you ever, like in the process of developing it, have you ever fallen down in a process like, oh, that didn't work?
[00:05:10.896] George Burger: No, actually, no one's ever fallen on it yet.
[00:05:13.798] Kent Bye: Wow. So what were some of the things that you learned from this prototype that you're going to take into the next iteration then?
[00:05:21.105] George Burger: Oh, there's too many to count. Hundreds of things. As I said, this one's too big, too heavy. All the parts are way over designed, which means heavy. So the next one will be more computer built. I'll use FEA more to get every ounce out of the treadmill. Because when you walk on it, the main treadmill is spinning. It obviously has inertia. And to stop something with inertia from going one direction to the other takes power. So the lighter the treadmill, the smaller the motor. So the lighter I can make it and smaller allows me to use smaller and cheaper motors. And everything gets cheaper smaller.
[00:06:04.895] Kent Bye: And so with virtual reality having this renaissance, at what point did you hear, oh, this virtual reality thing is coming up, this thing I've been working on for four years would be a great addition to that?
[00:06:16.930] George Burger: Well, actually, it was a coincidence it all happened. When I first made it, I'd heard of caves, right? And I thought, oh, you could use it in a cave, but those are not really cheap. Then TV screens are coming down in price. So I sort of envisioned, you know, like six or eight TV screens around the perimeter of it and using them for your reference. And then a year or so later, Palmer's Kickstarter came on board and it looked pretty good. I got on Meant to be Seen. I even talked, oh gosh, about a year and a half ago, I got on Meant to be Seen and I talked a little bit with it. I even showed them a picture of the predecessor to this, that very first one I talked about. And at that time, they didn't seem that interested in it. I didn't think they really understood it, but that was fine. I decided just to kind of lie low and not talk to anyone about it because the designing and the engineering of it, no one could help me with anyway. And if I talked to people about it, all I could get is people asking, is it done yet? So I said, you know what? I'll just be quiet. Palmer knew I was doing it for about a year and a half. We talked back and forth a little bit about it. So he was always encouraging me. He couldn't wait to get it. He wants to put it in the lobby, apparently, of Oculus. But we'll see what happens.
[00:07:39.132] Kent Bye: So what was his reaction after he did it? Because I saw that he had a chance to actually use it yesterday.
[00:07:43.582] George Burger: He loves it. He loves it. I knew he was going to. We'd already talked about it. He had suggestions on how to control it. And very good suggestions, kind of along the line we're thinking ourselves. And also, Doc Ock, or Oliver, or whatever you call him, also had similar suggestions. So, he wants to buy one, he said. So, awesome. And Oliver, or Doc Ock, wants to help us out, you know, in getting the control interface going, and the interface to virtual reality happening. I'm up near Sacramento, he's near Davis, so, We're very close to each other, so I know that's going to happen.
[00:08:25.201] Kent Bye: Has anybody used any virtual reality experiences while walking on this omnidirectional InfiniDeck treadmill?
[00:08:31.267] George Burger: No, I can't wait for that to happen. No, it's going to be great when it does. I can't wait. But until the control system is there, you're asking for trouble if you try it right now.
[00:08:43.714] Kent Bye: I see. Yeah, because you're sort of disoriented in that way.
[00:08:46.278] George Burger: Yeah, you'd better have a safety cable to the roof. And even then, it wouldn't be much of an experience. You have to have the control system.
[00:08:56.030] Kent Bye: I see. So, what's the target market? I mean, with the size it is now, around 1,000 pounds, and, you know, you're trying to get it down, but who are you trying to go after in terms of, like, who are you building this for?
[00:09:07.312] George Burger: Well, probably everyone. The base machine, it was designed specifically for mass production. The way it goes together, how it's made, is completely mass production. Depending on how big it is and what extras you want, It could be used by, let's see, military, medical, police officers, everybody in the world, including gamers. The gamers are the ones. I have to figure out how to do that. I'm guessing one like that hopefully will be 3,000, maybe 4,000, maybe even less if we can do it. but really not much more than that. And really, how big should we make it? How fast do we want the user to go? We would make it very much where it's portable, of course, so he could get it home. It will never be as portable as a VirtueX. He's not really my competitor. We're on two ends of a spectrum, and there's plenty of room for both.
[00:10:07.538] Kent Bye: Yeah, I've heard people describe, and it really makes sense to me, the different tiers of, like, there's a mobile experience, there's the PC gaming experience, and then there's, like, the IMAX experience where you're going in and having, like, a full entire room that's sort of dedicated to VR and you're untethered and it's positionally tracked. And I'd imagine something like this type of omnidirectional treadmill would be at that tier of something where you've got, like, a dedicated room to do VR.
[00:10:34.057] George Burger: Well, you wouldn't need that much of a room because you need only the geometry of the Incendadeck. Now, if it goes where I'm planning on it going, you will feel like you're in that room. If it goes completely the way I want it, when you walk and you're inside the virtual reality, you will feel completely like you are walking. You know, no different than untethered, or walking naturally. So that big room would definitely not be necessary. Not unless you wanted, perhaps, you know, more than one, five, six, or eight, or ten, or twenty of them, or whatever, so a whole bunch of people could join the same virtual reality experience as a group.
[00:11:15.572] Kent Bye: I see. And so, what are the dimensions now, in terms of how long and wide it is?
[00:11:20.960] George Burger: The outside dimensions are about seven feet square. The actual running dimension that you can use is about 60 inches squared.
[00:11:30.827] Kent Bye: I see. So you're trying to keep people in the center in some way.
[00:11:33.189] George Burger: Yes. Yes. Which obviously allows them to move around a bit. You know, a gate plus a foot length is what someone would need. It's a lot less than 60 inches. So, uh, I'm already knowing I'm going to make it about 10 inches smaller in either direction. And how big it finally is, though, will ultimately depend on how well Oliver helps us out and how good our control systems work to keep the user in the center or close to it.
[00:12:01.985] Kent Bye: I see. And have you tried to measure pushing it to the limits in terms of, like, this is how fast you can walk or run?
[00:12:09.724] George Burger: Not really. This one wasn't made for that. I'm virtually positive I can make it go as fast as I want within limits. I think I could probably get up to about 10 miles an hour if it was designed for that. That one will never go 10 miles an hour. It wasn't designed for it. So how you want it to perform depends on how you want it made. Probably a price point difference too.
[00:12:35.329] Kent Bye: Yeah, I guess what I'm thinking about is it's a walking speed. It's not meant for running, in other words.
[00:12:40.496] George Burger: This one was meant for jogging about five miles an hour, which is a medium jog. Right now it's only going about three and a half, but again, this thing is a baby. We're trying to see what it can do, and it really depends on what actual conveyor belting you use on it and a few other variables as to how fast it can go. But they're all completely within our control. We can design it for anything we want. So this one's purpose is just to find out the bass design needs to be. So I'm very, very happy with it. As a matter of fact, this purpose was over before it came here. This is just kind of a bonus. They asked me to bring it here, even without the controller, so what the heck. So now I'm public. Before this, it was nice and no one knew about me. It was nice and casual. So we'll see what changes now.
[00:13:35.034] Kent Bye: Great. Well, thanks so much.
[00:13:36.455] George Burger: You're welcome.
