I came up with the idea for tracking feet movement while sitting down to control motion in games/VR over a year ago. Over a year ago when I first tried the Oculus Rift, the thing that broke immersion the most for me was moving using a keyboard/controller. As someone that's done parkour and taekwondo, I've always found movement controls limiting because I wanted to use my feet. I came up with the idea of using leg movements while seated to control movement but I wasn't sure about the sensors so I sat on it.
This past weekend at the Launch Hackathon, I finally prototyped this interface using the Leap Motion with lots of cardboard and it works! For Walk This Way, we tricked the Leap into tracking foot movement which we used to control forward walking speed for the purpose of immersive movement in VR.
Walking Demo Video
The two parts of this hack are a mount to attach the Leap Motion under a chair and cardboard cutout hands that I attached behind my feet.
The chair Leap Motion mounting, made with cardboard, glue, coffee stirrers and velcro straps.
Cardboard foot-to-hand converter.
This is what the leap sees.
Screen shot of the walking data.
We were just a bit shy of controlling movement in VR with this but if you want a hint at the potential, load a VR simulation with a human avatar and try moving your legs in sync.
Admittedly this is a hack and the real way would use the Leap Image data to do feet recognition which unfortunately is beyond me. That said, I'd love to collaborate with anyone that wants to run with this.
