I've seen some insanely ambitious VRChat projects but good god just watch this video already. It's from "Dream Drive" , a Japanese inventor who is creating an 8 foot tall Transformers-type robot in the real world... that is controllable from within VRChat.
That's possible, he tells me, by virtual serial communication between VRChat and Raspberry Pi. (His VRChat username is "micchy".) And while he's creating the software connecting the virtual world to the real one in order to control his robot, he plans to make the code generally available for people to create other mixed reality applications:
"As for serial communication between VRChat and real life, I see a lot of possibilities, and I hope to contribute to both, improving the quality in VR space and real life," as he puts it to me.
"I just finished the serial communication and am in the process of creating the real-time output of the avatar's bone information," he adds. "Our goal is to move the entire body during 2023. Only the head and hands are complete. As for the body, we are first developing a high power actuator, and the actuator is almost complete. We are now going to make the framework of the body."
You can follow his progress on Twitter or his YouTube. As you can see above, he's already made it possible to connect to Raspberry Pi from within VRChat, and connected a prototype robot to a VRChat avatar.
A key definition to the Metaverse, as I've said before, is direct integration of the virtual world with the material realm through various devices. Recall in Snow Crash, for instance, how a profoundly disabled man is still able to get around the real world in a van which he drives from within the Metaverse.
Not that this was Dream Drive's motivation to do all this:
"I wanted to make a cool robot," he tells me. "That's all."
Hat tip: Thanks to Sanny for help reaching out!
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