Robotic Go-Karts for Crippled Kids

"Babies Do the Driving in Delaware Lab"

Researchers at the University of Delaware are letting a baby drive a weird contraption, and hope to "help immobile, disabled children move and explore."

Aside from the feel-good aspect of helping crippled kids, there's a very practical goal to this research. If this works, youngsters who can't move on their own can have the learning experiences that babies and toddlers normally get by moving around and exploring.

As someone who spent a fair percentage of his childhood in one sort of cast or another, my response is, 'go baby, go!'

The article gives links to

• University of Delaware
  Where James C. (Cole) Galloway and Sunil Agrawal are designing robots to help babies with Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism and other disorders move around and learn
• Bath Institute of Medical Engineering
  home of the Wizzybug
• Dragonmobility Ltd,
  home of the Dragon, DragonFly and SnapDragon

On the down side, with something like the Whizzybug, I probably wouldn't have developed the upper body strength I got by dragging myself around. These robots should really help youngsters with serious mobility problems, though.