This amputee built himself a foot-operated videogame controller

By Duncan Geere

Five years ago, Gyorgy Levay lost both of his hands to a meningitis infection. The avid gamer could no longer use a traditional videogame controller.

But now Levay, and two of his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University, has developed an alternative controller that can be operated by a person’s feet. Each sandal-like device includes three sensors that can pick up different foot movements and translate them into commands.

Their creation, which is called Game Enhancing Augmented Reality or GEAR, can simulate eight buttons in its most basic setup, or up to 20 buttons with some practice. They’ve used it to play a variety of games, including Counter-Strike, Fallout 4 and World of Warcraft.

“Next to our hands,” said Adam Li, who also worked on the device, “our feet are probably the most dexterous part of our body.” The solution recently won the $7,500 grand prize in the 2016 Intel-Cornell Cup.

YouTube : youtube.com/watch?v=D8yJNgy_st8

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During testing, the team recorded clips of characters being controlled by an amputee using the technology and asked web users if they could tell it apart from a player attempting the same section of the game using a normal controller. Out of …read more

Source:: techradar.com – Gaming