Grand Prize at LA Hacks - Virtual Reality Treadmill

We won the “largest hackathon in history”: the Grand Prize at LA Hacks. Built over 36 hours with our team of three, our treadmill captures user movement and translates it into motion in any virtual reality world. It was designed to be low-cost, widely compatible, and high-performance.

As the user moves across the surface of the treadmill, low cost sensors activate from pressure, and an Arduino clusters the inputs to interpret the user’s motion (direction and intent - standing, walking, running). Those clusters are sent as keyboard button presses to the computer running the virtual reality world. The user wears an Oculus Rift.