We’ve seen people make human hamster balls, treadmills, and tilting chairs to physically simulate motion during virtual reality (VR) experiences. While those can work to a certain degree, there are just a whole load of sensations each solution simply cannot recreate. If you want to go all the way with simulating motion, you’ll want something more like the CableRobot, a suspended VR cage that can literally fling you across the room.
Created by research group Fraunhofer and the Max Planck Institute’s Biological Cybernetics group, the cage is held by eight hydraulic cables that can move it in place, lift it up into the air, or send it hurling to any place in the room, ensuring you can simulate a whole load of movements, from a motorcycle banking on a corner to a ship launching out of a space station to a race car turn-turtling in the middle of the tracks. Seriously, this thing looks so fun, you’ll probably want to get on even without any VR in tow – they can sell this thing as a ride in amusement parks and I’ll be willing to fall in line.
The CableRobot’s carbon fiber cage comes with a flat platform and a racing seat, where you’ll strap yourself during the experience. It’s designed to work with VR headsets that integrate optical head-tracking, data from which it uses to decide which direction to move the cage. Powered by a 348 kW motor assembly, the cage can accelerate at 1.5g inside an area spanning 5 x 8 x 5 meters, so there’s a heck of a lot of things you can get this setup to do.
While it still isn’t the one-size-fits-all motion simulator for all VR experiences, this should cover, practically, any content where the main participant is sitting down, whether in the cabin of a race car, the cockpit of warplane, or the control room of an intergalactic warship in a way that is more immersive than anything before it. Hit the press release below to learn more.