Using a Conductive Rubber Band as a Game Controller

RubberArms is an interactive game featuring a conductive rubber band as main controls, created by Robin Baumgarten at the Global Game Jam 2017.

The controller uses a conductive rubber cord from Adafruit, which changes resistance as you stretch it. This is easily measured using a Teensy 3.2 (or an Arduino Leonardo/Micro), which can act as a USB joystick and feed that info into Unity3D.

The game itself is only a prototype so far, where you control the distance of two characters. Their arms stretch as you stretch the rubber band, and catches little ‘Bleps’ falling from above. You can help them feed on purple food blobs, if you’d like.

Admittedly, there is no concrete game goal… yet. You can read more about the project on Baumgarten’s page as well as jump in the ongoing Reddit discussion here.