Sensors

I recently purchased: Acroname Products Sharp GP2D02 IR Ranger according to
someone's suggestion (I believe on this list) for my cnc router. Can somene
explain how I would get the "8-bit serial output read" into my computer?
direct serial pin input?

http://webpages.charter.net/trend/sensor.JPG is a simple schematic provided
by the manufacture.

And the orginal page is:
http://www.acroname.com/robotics/parts/R19-IR02.html


Thanks!
lee