Babies Drive Robotic Cars Via Wii Balance Board Controls

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Stringing together certain words can make most anybody nervous, but it’s even worse when the resulting phrases become true–try, for example, “babies” and “driving robotic cars”. You’ve heard of road rage, now brace yourself for road crankiness as the infant drivers come about thanks to a combination of robotics and the Wii balance board.

The folks out at Ithaca College are responsible for this lump of bizarre, and they did it by stacking a Wii balance board, a standard infant car seat, and putting it all on top of a robotic, motorized kind of wheelchair. Thus, the babies can control their chair’s movement by leaning left or right according to the direction in which they want to travel.

The chair comes equipped with sonar, so that it can sense and avoid potential crashes, and it can be remotely babyjacked at any time by an adult with a remote control device, ostensibly a specifically-tuned one.

When these will be available is still pie-in-the-sky at this point as further tests need doing, but I kind of like the idea of being about to drive a car by leaning. I’m not as happy about the thought of Junior being able to do it, but still.