Autonomous game controllers
posted Jan 7th 2009 5:28pm by Caleb Kraftfiled under: arduino hacks, playstation hacks
On the off chance that you want to program a microcontroller to play your games for you, you should check this out. Near Future Laboratories has made a dongle that can allow an Arduino to operate as a PS2 or PS3 controller. You can see the Arduino running a random path generator in Katamari Damacy in the video above. They wanted to see how long it would take to clear a room. It managed to get almost all of them in about 70 minutes, only missing those that you have to cross a narrow bridge for. Actually, this could be quite useful in allowing people to create alternative input methods. You may recall reading about their early progress back in June 2008.
When it comes to autonomous gaming, I still prefer the “rubber-band-on-left-stick-wrapped-around-controller” method for Gran Turismo, mainly for endurance races.