Robot Tiles know your next step

You know the scene in X-Men where Magneto moves across a chasm from his plastic prison using some metal extracted from a guard’s bloodstream? The Robot Tiles work in pretty much the same way, although you won’t need to have any mutant powers – after all, these robotic blocks were specially designed to detect where you are going to step next, positioning themselves right in front of your feet so that you won’t fall to your doom (and sprain an ankle in the process). The Robot Tiles were developed by Hiroo Iwata, a professor who is currently working in a VR lab at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. Individual robotic vehicles will be covered with a layer of Kuralon EC, a touch-sensitive conductive fabric which is capable of detecting where pressure has been applied by the walker’s feet, calculating just where the user will be stepping next. An array of ultrasonic sensors will then relay the position and orientation of each tile back to a central computer which will process said information, letting them know where to go next. Creepy!