Technology

like when the collective world went outside at the same time when Pokemon Go launched. Our quiet downtown area was amazing to walk through. all those people.

Summer 2016 were my healthiest few months..

Just think how annoying it would be if like the best players in the world were only good because they were literally Olympic sprinters and just ran literal circles around you in a fight lol

Unikely.. Kinda why VR also didnt get too popular, most players just prefer "classic" controls and not movement-controls.
But this is huge for VR and other usages of this, probably even useful for production routing, but i dont have any knowledge of that.

Speedrunners must be able to speedrunning irl.

I don't think it needs to be much bigger for an individual, just fast enough to keep them near the center even at a run. Smaller pads will be the way to go, just have to drive and control them in sync. Maybe predictive software to only run where your feet are at or will be, to minimize the noise.

Pretty sure companies like that get bought by companies like Disney...

That one (assuming it's the same as your memory) was basically just a concave dome and you wore like socks. This seems pretty different.

Pinchy.

Also, hair-pully.

Edit: oh god imagine running fast on this thing then falling over with long hair. scalped

This is totally going to be a Black Mirror episode.

The working principle is different though.

That is nothing like this one really.

This is just a crude early version. Eventually the tiles will be significantly smaller, quieter, and less prone to ripping toes off.

Spent a lot of time with engineers, but am not one myself. Most grinding discs and things that wear stuff down have a surface made to rip in, and higher opposed friction. Think sandpaper, it digs into a surface with those hills from the grit, and uses the friction to then drag through cutting the surface and removing material.

With this floor, it looks like the wheels are smooth, so all though there's some friction, it isn't a cutting action. There's also the fact that their friction is unopposed and can actually move the person, so the energy gets converted into movement, not the cutting force that would grind things down.

They really are just tiny treadmills, the only reason they're discs is so they can be tilted to change the direction the "treadmill" is going to push you. If the disc is tilted to the right, the left most edge is going forward, if the disk is tilted to the left, that right edge is moving backwards. Otherwise exact same principle as a treadmill of creating friction to move the object on it.

Hope that helps some. Diagrams would probably help more.

If you ever run barefoot or in socks on a regular treadmill, you'll feel that it's a little bit rougher than just walking around normally. But it's still not enough to really make noticeable wear on shoes (any more than normal running on pavement is).

Basically, shoe soles are specifically made to be pretty tough, so this type of treadmill shouldn't be worse than normal.

It doesn't grind anything basically the same way a treadmill doesn't sand anything. You're not forcing anything to stay put on the surface, you're maneuvering on the surface while the surface is counter-moving you.