"Revolver Bladder Driven" ODT

[colocolo]

Remember the Omnipad? They have updated their website with new infos and videos. Pretty interesting, but yet a prototype of this marvellous, lightweight, passive ODT remains to be seen.
http://www.omnipad.com


BUSINESS PLAN

Have you ever thought of being immersed inside the virtual world of a video game? Have you ever wanted to walk around inside of a computer generated 3D simulation, where you can actually walk, jog and run in ANY DIRECTION? Think of the possibilities that the imagination within all of us has yet to discover...

The answer is the OmniPad™ !

The OmniPad™ is a lightweight, portable and cost effective omni-directional treadmill that is designed to enable 360-degree
freedom of locomotion within virtual 3D environments. It is a circular “Revolving Bladder Driven” treadmill that allows
users, wearing wireless Virtual Reality Display Glasses, to maneuver their way on foot in all directions through computer generated, 3D, real-time, 360-degree OmniPad Environments™. Users are able to walk, run or jog for miles in any
direction through three dimensional virtual terrains without moving through space in the real world.

The product strategy for The OmniPad™ Corporation is to introduce our ground breaking innovation to the military, the video
game marketplace, and to the cardiovascular exercise industry. We expect to offer our product at a reasonable cost, allowing
all consumers to have the experience of a lifetime. It is our goal to make the OmniPad™ accessible to all, while maintaining
the highest degree of quality and customer satisfaction.

[Applemung]

Soooo.... How is the bladder driven? I had to watch the videos without audio so I may have missed it.
If it is the users feet that drive the bladder I don't see how it won't be a workout just to walk.
Looks overly complex for something that achieves the same result as the virtuix or the virtualizer.

[colocolo]

Soooo.... How is the bladder driven? I had to watch the videos without audio so I may have missed it.
If it is the users feet that drive the bladder I don't see how it won't be a workout just to walk.
Looks overly complex for something that achieves the same result as the virtuix or the virtualizer.

yet we don't what results to expect and if a resulting benefit over existing ODT solution would be achieved
i think the complexity would be worth it.
The only strange and complex part i can see in this design would be the bladder. How do you manufacture it around the device. the rests only consists of a few hollow plastic balls.

[Applemung]

Yeah the bladder would be the toughest part to construct. I would imagine that you would need it in two pieces and then
plastic weld it back together over the device. I say the device is complex because of the amount of manufacturing required
for a passive device would cost far more than already available passive devices. Because you have to push the device with
your feet to get it to move you are exerting more energy than what would be comfortable.

If the bladder is able to be driven, say by making the exterior of the bladder very tactile and pressing a motor with a omni-directional wheel
against the bladder and the interior bearing. You could have two of these motors to be able to drive it in any direction.

If that were to happen I would certainly buy something like that. But being passive it has no benefits over the current available devices.

It is bigger
Requires force from the user to drive the machine
More moving parts
Repair of device would be complicated (imagine a hole in the bladder and silicone liquid all over the place)

It is a good idea and I hope that they manage to get around the many obstacles they will encounter.
More competition means more innovation, and hopefully cheaper omni devices.

[MSat]

Magical bladder that doesn't collapse when you step on it... I'll believe it when I see it.

[zalo]

This device infeasible for two reasons:

• 1. The bladder would not move like how he's imagining. There is just no way you can make a bladder bag that would rotate around the disk like that.
  If you had a disk shaped bladder, then moving a little bit would prevent the shape of the bladder from conforming to the disk (if it didn't break first).
  If the bladder were spherical and stretched around the disk then it would have a loose patch in the middle and be extremely taut around the edges.
  
  2. If your disk is completely wrapped in the bladder, how to do you anchor it to the ODT's frame? Perhaps they're thinking about doing something clever.

I want to see a prototype, or even a model that demonstrates the mechanism of this ODT.

[Attreyu]

No.

[colocolo]

There is a large PDF file under Business plan.
A section of this document explains also a engineering plan. p.37
2 full time mechanical engineers to create a prototype within 240 days.
Hmmmm.... i don't know, but that was back in 2011.
On the other hand why would they update their website if research is so hopeless....
Seeing is believing.

[Lark]

Hopefully this turns into something cool, but that's probably the worst website I've seen since angelfire/geocities were big.