I Tried a Disney Secret Project!

(brilliant music) - Okay, I gotta see something really cool. I was able to visit some of the

secret

laboratories within the Walt Disney Company called Disney Imagineering Labs. So, you know, I've seen some people talk about them a little bit before, but obviously Disney has all these rides and theme parks and attractions, and someone has I have to design and design all those things. And there's a surprising amount of technology involved. And some of them are still experimental and unreleased, where no one outside of Disney, well, except me now, has to use them. This thing is very cool.

So Disney Imagineering has a bunch of these buildings scattered around this California neighborhood that I was able to visit, where they make realistic animatronic robots as part of their attractions. I was literally greeted at the door with these little droids, the same ones that wander around the theme parks. And these things have a surprising amount of similarities to the Boston Dynamics Spot robot I played with a few years ago. You know, that Spot robot was capable of navigating any terrain with adaptive gait and following instructions from a custom, but surprisingly easy-to-learn controller, so it could navigate and do jobs that humans wouldn't do.

And it's also a lot of fun to play with. These little droids for theme parks are very similar. They are able to adapt to any terrain, they walk, follow instructions from a customized steam platform as a controller, which took me about 60 seconds to learn, and they can cruise around non-stop all day, interacting with theme park visitors. and it's fun to play with. It was super fun. And it's also really crazy how much technology is inside one of these things. It's literally combining all of these animations, from walking to standing and looking around. It's great. But that's not even what I was there to try.

I was there specifically to be the first person outside of Disney to walk on HoloTile. You may have seen some videos about this. The HoloTile. It's a crazy, unique, 360-degree treadmill, basically like a moving floor. It's still in an experimental phase and is the only one out there, but I already have these gears turning in my head about potential future applications, particularly in VR. And there's actually one specific thing that I have reservations about, but I'll get to that in a minute. Now, I don't know if anyone has explained exactly how this works yet, but you can see that they are basically walking on a lot of these little one-inch discs that spin on their bases like a lot of tiny treadmills and then spin around. to match the direction you are walking.

So obviously a normal treadmill is one direction, right? Just a plane that advances and rotates. So you always know exactly where you are going. But let's say you want to build a treadmill that is responsive and can go in any direction. Well, a flat treadmill, that would be very difficult, right? It would have to turn quickly to match the direction you're walking, which is crazy. So instead, built into the floor are a bunch of articulated cones with discs on top, with motors inside to spin those discs. Okay, so the key here is that the discs are tilted.

So only the edge of the puck in the air is the part that actually touches what's on the ground. So it's less of a flat treadmill and more of a bunch of little blades spinning under your feet. So when you walk forward, they rotate clockwise to move your foot toward the center once it lands. And in fact, when you walk backwards, they walk counterclockwise to move your foot toward the center. So no matter where you go, any direction you walk, no matter how long or how fast your step is, it will always take you back to the center.

I've seen these videos that Disney put up of this guy walking on them, but we have to work to get there. You know, I've never walked on it before and it's capable of doing other things. So let's graduate, let's get there. So there are three ways to control this. You have to walk on it, obviously, but you also have to use a controller, like the PlayStation 5 controller. And you also have to use force directly and point at it with your hands. Let's start there. First we place this box of apples on the HoloTile. And there's a screen up here that shows in real time all the inputs and what the sensors see, both on the floor and around the floor.

And they've actually mapped anything that crosses a certain line in front of me to move any object that's on the ground. So when I move my hand in front of that line, the program moves the floor to match the movement of the object with the movement of my hand. And this is pretty sick. I'm guessing everyone watching this has seen Star Wars and realizes how cool it would be to have something like this in some kind of Star Wars theme park experience. So this is already cool, but the first time I get on the HoloTile is in a chair and with a PlayStation controller.

So I'll be in a chair where the chair is on a piece of wood, so it's flat-bottomed, and then they handed me the PlayStation controller. And well, see for yourself. - Yes. - 3, 2, 1, enable. (tiles creaking) (tiles creaking): So the left stick is assigned to control position and the right stick controls rotation. So you can turn and move freely and actually quickly get used to this. And if you're wondering, yes, I can get up completely off the ground, that would allow me, I was just trying to be careful not to go over the edge. But it moves very fast. (tiles creaking) So now, after all that, now that I've experienced how it moves, they're now going to let me walk on the HoloTile. - Okay, I'll start with training mode, which is a fraction of the normal speed, but will still get me used to how it works.

So I'm ready. - 3, 2, 1, enable. - Training mode is activated. So now, start walking slowly. I can feel them moving a little, but they're still not moving too fast. So this is normal. Oh, okay, now they start moving and my feet start moving with the tiles. Here we go. So as I walk slowly, a little faster, a little quicker, with slightly longer strides, I get more used to the feel of the tiles. So they designed this to be about a two-minute process as these little tiles slowly accelerated their responsiveness to my movements. And little by little it increased more and more, basically until it was one hundred percent real time.

Now it looks like it's moving pretty close to maximum speed. And obviously there's a learning curve, but I feel like I'm good enough at it that I can walk around and not think too much. It feels good. And then there's all the data behind me in real time. Showing my feet, my legs. Walking through this, I noticed a couple of things. First of all, as you may have heard in this video, it is quite loud. Like this is something they would definitely want to work on, especially if it's something that will one day be part of a theme park, or maybe even in someone's house.

But I also found it fascinating that you never walk in a straight line. For example, it may feel quite close if your foot is lined up along a row of discs that are all aligned somewhat from the center. But other times you're just gliding over the top of a bunch of these ridges and you're not moving in a perfectly straight line. I imagine a future version of this will look like a bunch of much smaller, more numerous disks that are just as powerful, which is clearly an engineering challenge or an imagination challenge. So yes, it takes some getting used to.

I know this because I got to hang out with HoloTile inventor Lanny Smoot. He has been at Disney for more than 20 years. He has over 70 patents, including how BB8 rolls through the park, real-life lightsabers, just to name a few. It's kind of a legend. And yes, this guy is amazing at it. He was showing me that you can have two people at once, and they were playing a multiplayer racing game, like controlling a BB8 eight around a field running. And it seemed to work quite well, apart from being quite small. Obviously this would work better if they had more tiles of this type.

But what seemed craziest to me is using this floor with a virtual reality headset on. So this is what you would expect it to be for, for virtual reality, right? And I've seen other types of 360-degree treadmill videos, other types of inventions used for virtual reality. And they work, but the only difficult thing about this, and it's difficult to explain through a video, is the difference between what your eyes see and what your body and your brain feel, that disagreement. I mean, this has always been true, if you look at your phone a lot in a moving car, right?

Your eyes see something still, they see your body still, but then your brain and your inner ear feel that you are moving, that you are moving forward. And so, the disagreement between what your eyes see and what your brain feels, that's what can make you dizzy. That's what feels wrong. And if you think about it, the same thing happens with this moving treadmill in virtual reality. You put on your headphones and you start walking, and your eyes see that you are walking down a moving hallway, that you are moving forward. But your brain, because you're walking in the same place, doesn't feel like it's supposed to be moving forward.

Again, there is a disagreement there. So with HoloTile, I had to try putting on an Apple Vision Pro and walking around a 3D built environment. You can't see it, but I'm on a Star Trek holographic platform or something, and I have a harness on because it turns out this is very difficult. My eyes see the movement and my legs try to walk forward and my feet slide, but my brain thinks I'm not supposed to move forward. So, it's confusing. It's hard to just trust it and walk. Additionally, there is an additional layer that sometimes moves you a little back towards the center.

So I was taking all these little steps. Meanwhile, watch Lanny do it, and he's just incredible at it. As if she had headphones on, she confidently walked through the space, exploring a virtual world. I'm pretty sure it's like a virtual Disney theme park. But that's the kind of thing that most resembles the future. Just freely, exploring a huge space, walking around, maybe in the comfort of your home. And that would be amazing. And if this can continue to develop, maybe, just maybe, we can one day get closer to that reality. Either way, that's definitely cool technology.

I'm glad I got to see the first version of this and I'm very curious and excited to see future versions. Disney, please invite me back. I want to see what the future of this will really be like. Well, that's all. Thanks for watching. See you at the next one. Peace. (brilliant music)