News: Take Your Angry Birds Game to the Next Level with This Haptic USB Slingshot Controller

Playing Angry Birds on a computer just got a lot more interesting. Design students Andrew Spitz and Hideaki Matsui made this awesome slingshot controller for one of their classes at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.

They customized a motorized slider and an Arduino microcontroller, which connect to the computer via USB.

The real tough part was making the movement of the birds coordinate with the controller. Here's what they said on the project website:

"Basically, the way we achieved this is by drawing a force curve and storing the values in a table, then we send the current position of the slider through the table and extract the value to send to the motor that applies an opposing force."

But the best part in my opinion has to be the tiny TNT detonator that activates the birds once they're airborne.

Check out the "How It Works" part of the video and the { sound + design } project page for more information on how they built it.

Stuck on a level? Check out one of our many tutorials for help!