A stroll around the ancient city of Pompeii will be made possible this week thanks to a new omni-directional treadmill. The treadmill is a "motion platform" which gives the impression of "natural walking" in any direction. The platform, called CyberCarpet, is made up of several belts which form an endless plane along two axes. Scientists have combined the platform with a tracking system and virtual reality software recreating Pompeii. The platform gives "walkers" a walking area of 4.5m by 4.5m and moves fast enough to allow jogging at about two metres per second. "This is the first omni-directional platform that allows near natural walking," said Dr Marc Ernst from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tubingen.The platform is a result of a collaboration between the Swiss and German institutes, and the University of Rome, the Institute of Applied Mechanics and the Institute of Automatic Control Engineering.Full article @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7346325.stm
