This little game is a small part of the Force Feedback Mouse project, of which you can watch the explanatory video here. The ‘game’ is a maze without start or end which the player is supposed to navigate without hitting the walls, while using the Force Feedback Mouse. However, while the mouse is controlling the game, the game is also controlling the mouse. The software sends messages to an i/o board which control the position of an electromagnet underneath the mouse mat of the player, using servo motors, or which switch the electromagnet on or off. In this way the player using the mouse can be given the feeling that the mouse is either protesting and refusing to be moved somewhere, or that it is eager to go somewhere and pulling your hand over.

When new, more intuitive and less clumsy, input methods will have made the old computer mouse obsolete, we’ll be missing the physicality of it which allows us to do fun projects like this.