Control Freak turns any object into a game controller

by Stan Horaczek, posted Jul 10th 2006 at 1:54AM

Apparently the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea doesn't mind students going a little out of the box for their masters thesis projects, seeing as they let Haiyan Zhang develop an interesting system intended to translate the motion of everyday objects into input devices for simple video games. When the Control Freak device is clamped onto a "host object," whether it's a door, an office chair or your lab partner, it starts interpreting the host's sounds and movements, representing them as simple actions in a selection of specially designed flash games. The video demonstrations on the site suggest it has a long way to go before it catches up to the refinement of Nintendo's Wiimote, but it's already a heck of a lot better than the Powerglove ever was (don't front). On a related note, we have to wonder if this school gives out masters degrees for turning video game controllers into everyday objects.

Filed under: Gaming

Tags: clamp, control freak, ControlFreak, controller, motion sensing, MotionSensing, thesis

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Sex on the Beach with Batman @ Jul 10th 2006 2:11AM

clamp me up and make me a human controller

Neutral

dhruv @ Jul 10th 2006 2:11AM

thats pretty cool. it could have uses in stuff other than games. like it could be used in surgery where instead of working on computers the surgeon could see with computers and work with tools like always but this time his motion would be interpreted by the computers which would eliminate any errors and then perform the same on the patient. u get the idea i presume. anyway this kids got brains . few yrs down the line he could be chief engineer heading the design of the wii-2

Neutral

Anuj @ Jul 10th 2006 4:15AM

i agree dhruv the kids got brains and guts to think of this and carry out as execution is tougher than the idea. Brilliant but it need to be refined if it becomes useful what happened to those gloves anyway?

Neutral

Shane @ Jul 10th 2006 7:37AM

Uhhh...Dhruv? That stuff already exists. At least the technology for a surgeon to operate on someone via remote controlled robotics does. I doubt, however, that the current systems would protect the patient from surgeon error (just as if they were actually working on the patient).

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/robotic-surgery1.htm
http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/products/davinci_surgicalsystem/index.aspx

Neutral

Blue Sam @ Jul 10th 2006 7:56AM

Hmm.. it seem bit basic concept by play like Wii's.

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