HoloTile Floor, the latest invention of Disney's Lanny Smoot

Many of Lanny Smoot's best-known inventions are, at least to non-engineers, more like magic tricks. Floating disembodied heads, a lightsaber that actually expands, retracts and glows, and, in its latest sleight of hand, a reinvention of the ground. Yes, a flat.

Smoot, at 68, is the most prominent modern inventor at Walt Disney Co., based in Burbank. Working within Imagineering, the company's secretive arm dedicated to theme park experiences, Smoot creates scientific feats that often seem like illusions to visitors. With 106 patents over his career and counting (Smoot is quick to lean forward and tell me he's far from done), his career has shown that applied sciences can be both a creative and technical field.

Their innovative new floor, a creation years in the making, was recently shown to the public, hidden inside Imagineering's research and development space in Glendale. While it doesn't yet have a designated use in Disney theme parks or other experiences, it's a matter of versatility and it's easy to imagine the possibilities.

Think of a treadmill, just one that works with you instead of against you: twisting, turning and moving in the direction of your body, without traditional limits. Disney calls it the HoloTile Floor and it is essentially in communication with you, allowing you to move in any direction and never trip on its surface. A clear use is virtual reality, since now, inside a headset, one is not in danger of crashing into a railing or a sofa. But it's more than a gaming device.

Multiple people can walk (or dance) on Smoot's HoloTile, allowing for creative choreography in a show, for example. Anyone, Smoot notes, can “moonwalk” the HoloTile. Or objects can be made to roll in the direction of the guest's choosing, with demonstrated movements reminiscent of some of the Force's magnetic abilities from the “Star Wars” franchise. Place a chair on the HoloTile and it instantly becomes a ride-on vehicle as an operator can turn it or pull it forward. I imagined, for example, that the furniture in the Casa Madrigal from “Encanto” suddenly came to life once the guests were strapped to it.

Like many of Smoot's best-known inventions, it is not only a technical achievement but a pleasure. Smoot was recently inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, part of a class of 2024 that included, among others, Asad Madni, whose advances in safety and stability are common in automobiles and have been used by NASA, and Andrea Goldsmith, a pioneer. in high-speed wireless communications. Smoot's Hall of Fame selection is a testament to the power of entertainment and that the design of large-scale community spaces, like theme parks, can inspire the kind of wonder that can improve lives.

“Now I meet a lot of electrical engineers and ask them how they got started. They say, 'Oh, I kept taking things apart,'” says Smoot, sitting in a modest office on Disney's research and development campus. (Just outside his door is a robot training pod in development, where Imagineers have been testing bipedal droids that can jump in place, tilt their heads, and push and shove humans as if they were robotic pets.) .

“I was a little different,” Smoot continues. “I figured out how they worked before I took them apart and what components there might be inside them that I could take out and make my own things. I think that's part of what causes creativity. No I want to see someone else's thing. “I want to see mine.”

And when it came to HoloTile, Smoot wanted something from one of his favorite TV franchises to come to life. He speaks enthusiastically about “Star Trek,” noting how important it was to him as a child growing up, he says, in poverty in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn. It was Uhura, Nichelle Nichols' communications manager, Smoot says, who partly inspired his career path. “I was a 'Star Trek' fan partly because of the technology, but also because I saw a black character, Uhura, who did technological things,” Smoot says.

Lanny Smoot joined Walt Disney Co. in the late 1990s and currently holds 106 patents.

(Christian Thompson/Disneyland Resort)

His love for “Star Trek” never waned. Smoot says HoloTile began not so much as a solution to some particular problem that Disney needed to solve, but when he wondered if it would be possible to create a “Holodeck,” where in the science fiction universe real-world settings come to life. through holograms.

“I knew of something called 'Holodeck,' which is where people can walk around forever in a 24-foot-by-24-foot room,” Smoot says. “They go to distant mountains and streams. How can that be, right? It must be that the floor of the 'Holodeck' has the ability to move people in any direction, to allow them to walk in any direction, to prevent them from crashing into things like the walls of the room or each other. It made me think. How can you have a moving surface that allows you to walk on it forever in any direction? The joke I make is that if you're in it and someone leaves the room and doesn't take you, you'll starve. “That was the spark.”

As it developed, so did its potential uses.

“He really wanted to solve the 'Holodeck' problem,” says Bobby Bristow, who has long worked closely with Smoot at Disney. “I wasn't really sure how to get there. He started with multiple iterations: at first, very different technology. It wasn't until we got the version we have now that we thought, 'We might as well use it to do this.' We can do all these other things. It not only unlocks moving people, but also objects. “We’re excited to have the people inside tell us what other uses they could put it to.”

It may be some time before guests can use or witness Smoot's HoloTile at a theme park, but much of Smoot's work is scattered throughout Disney locations. Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, for example, is home to a seance room, in which a crystal ball houses Madame Leota's head as she conjures the spirits shown in the attraction. Madame Leota floats, hovering patiently above a table as she summons the apparitions. This was a Smoot hack, added to the Mansion in 2004, and he doesn't reveal the secrets of how it works, but notes that the solution was part engineering feat and part wishful thinking.

Lanny Smoot is credited with finding a way to float Madame Leota's head in the Haunted Mansion.

(Joshua Sudock/Disneyland Resort)

Smoot also redid the portraits on the Mansion's entrance walkway. Here, images oscillate between the mortal world and more forbidden realms: ghostly knights, ships, and feline creatures. “Previous changing portraits required a room full of equipment,” says Smoot. “It was a complex effect. My effect was much smaller and gave the Mansion an instant change during the lightning. As soon as lightning strikes, the portraits change.”

Other Smoot inventions at Disney parks around the world: At Epcot in Florida, Smoot invented an old exhibit called “Where's the Fire?” which challenged guests to discover dangers using a flashlight that acted as an x-ray-like device, a setup that grew out of a tool created by Smoot that allowed people to see through walls. He also worked on that park's interactive scavenger hunt, the now-retired “Kim Possible: World Showcase Adventure,” and more recently devised a realistic “Star Wars” lightsaber that simulated the look of a retractable, illuminated blade, which Many online patent hunters have compared it, in simplified terms, to a kind of tape measure in reverse.

The lightsaber appeared in the short-lived but beloved Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. Smoot, for his part, is reluctant to talk about details and prefers to keep his secrets, well, his secrets. “It was a fun thing to do,” he says simply of the lightsaber.

Lanny Smoot says a love of “Star Trek” inspired his career.

(Disneyland Resort)

He feels more comfortable talking about his career as if it were a lifelong hobby. Smoot's journey initially took him to Bell Labs, where he worked on early video teleconferencing technologies, before beginning talks with Disney in 1998. Early on, the company sought Smoot's advice on mechanizing cameras that enabled view changes. on demand for Florida's Animal Kingdom park. “The company tried the panoramic camera, all good, but it turns out they liked the inventor even more and literally lured me to Walt Disney Co.,” Smoot says.

He attributes his love of invention to his father and talks about early scientific experiments as if they were toys. When he was five, Smoot says, his father brought home a battery, an electric doorbell and a light bulb. “I'm sitting at the table, and he puts them together and rings the bell,” Smoot says. “This was like magic. Then turn on the light. I say this is poetic, but it is true. It illuminated the rest of my career. “I was caught up in science, mainly electricity.”

Disney, he says, has been a great fit because he is constantly surprised at how the company's staff of craftsmen and architects hide its technology.

“I always say my stuff works,” Smoot says. “I guarantee that to you. It may not be the prettiest, but it works. He will get there.”

Now, what to do with a 'Holodeck' floor? Smoot and his team teased creations like an interactive dance floor, but there's room for more: a restaurant, for example, in the Land of the Dead from “Coco” in which we rotate between tables, a “Turning Red” show in the That Mei dressed in red panda form can move buildings, a display in Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge in which we can become one with the Force. Reimagine the floor and the possibilities are limitless.