In this project we tried to explore the world of force feedback. We built a little game where the player has to keep Wile E. Coyote from falling to the ground from the cliff. In order to do so the player has to rapidly push the lever up as quick as possible; if you’re too slow, gravity takes over and Wile E. Coyote will fall. As he gets closer to the top, the lever produces stronger resistance and becomes more difficult for the player to push.

 

This is achieved by using “The Plank” developed by Bill Verplank which uses the reader head of old hard drives re-purposed using magnets as an input device which provides force feedback by driving the reader head motor . This enables us to configure various types of haptic feedback based on situations to imitate real world objects like springs, flip switches etc. making the interaction more intuitive.