Stringwalker created by Hiroo Iwata and probably most known for his work Floating Eye was premiered for the first time outside of Japan at SIGGRAPH this year.

The controller consists of a pad and a pair of shoes attached to a circular system of eight motor-pulley mechanisms with sensors mounted on a turntable:

There’s not a whole lot online about it, but it appears that when you move a foot around - for instance in a step motion - the distance and trajectory of that movement is calculated based upon the direction and length of string that has passed over the pullies. This is then used to scroll the world accordingly. It also appears that by using motors attached to these pullies the system, they might even be able to simulate the exertion experienced when walking up a hill, for instance.

While not completely related to research on networks I find the idea of networks being to date largely reliable on cabling infrastructures (this is of course changing) and the extension of this cabling through a physical haptic interface which uses strings attached to the user, a sort of reverse puppet scenario, quite appealing.

Related interfaces are the slightly over the top Virtusphere and the more practical but possibly not as similar to walking Powered Shoes (from the same research lab).

Originally seen at Seleckparks.