Towards Cyber-Physical Holodeck Systems Via Physically Rendered Environments (PRE´s)

We present an early vision of a cyber-physical environment in which computer controlled rendering of physical surfaces, terrains, and environments is achieved by manipulating grids of "moving physical pixels\´\´ or "moxels", whose heights can be raised and lowered on command. A user would be free to walk within such a dynamically deformable physically rendered environment (PRE). The system would be able to create on demand the floor, ceiling and sides of the "Holodeck\´\´ in which the person resides, and vary the slipperiness of the surfaces to provide authentic tactile feedback in real time. A user would be able to conduct a walking tour of a remote site, the experience of climbing a steep mountain, or navigation through a maze - all within the bounds of the Holodeck. Multiple users could be networked together to create a distributed cyber-physical system to enable team-based distributed training. We present early results in a Holodeck-like simulator, HoloSim.