3D Mouse Cursor from Jason Safir on Vimeo.

For this week’s lab, my physical computing class was asked to do something creative with a servo motor. Going in to this assignment, I really had no idea what I was creating. One thing I did know is that the idea of controlling a servo motor with a range sensor really excited me.  There are so many possibilities and interesting results that can be achieved by using the combination of these two electronic components. What I have created here is a simple cursor sculpture that responds to the mouse’s position. When the mouse approaches the Parallax Range Sensor, the cursor rotates left, and when the mouse moves away from the sensor, it turns right. The maximum distance that the mouse can be read by the range sensor is 3m.