The object appears to move entirely on its own. But it isn’t telekinesis or some magic propelling it across the room, it’s Disney’s new HoloTile floor.
Disney new technology was presentedwhere small rotating tiles work together to move a person or object, at its D23 fan event last week, and viewers were impressed.
Anyone can walk on the HoloTile floor in any direction, and the floor will routinely move to maintain the person inside the tiles. This opens up possibilities for its use in areas resembling virtual reality.
The HoloTile floor is probably what I’m most looking forward to in Disney Imagineering. It brings us closer to the Star Trek Holodeck dream and helps create virtual worlds that we will run around in, though we’re in a small room. Oh, and make our Force dreams come true! #D23 photo:twitter.com/eJSYO8FTGW
— Adam Bankhurst @D23 (@AdamBankhurst) August 10, 2024
The HoloTile floor can even “support any number of people on the same floor … and have them be in virtual reality,” said Lanny Smoot, a research scientist at Disney. at the event“What we have is a sort of holodeck, if you will, a place where people can walk around in imaginary places, walk around to help us design new attractions, and can also move anything that is on its surface.”
In January, Smoot was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and gave a foretaste into a HoloTile floor, at this time. Disney doesn’t yet know where the floor will probably be used, but there are “just so many uses for it,” including embedding it in theater stages, Smoot said.
Technical Reviewer Marques Brownlee became the first non-Disney person in April, he walked across a HoloTile floor and said he envisions a future version with smaller and more tiles.
Disney’s D23 event also included other demosincluding one that delves into the engineering behind these are BD-X droids.