Go Baby Go!

For my Senior Design Capstone during my undergraduate degree, my team and I designed a modification kit used to make electric ride-on toy cars for children more accessible to those with nontraditional mobility needs. Our user has low muscle tone and delayed development, making these the primary focuses of the design. We added an easy-to-use joystick, an obstacle avoidance system, and a parent remote controller, making such vehicles much safer and more user-friendly for young children. We hope to scale up this solution further to create a broader impact on the accessibility community.

I was the team electronics and programming lead, developing the obstacle avoidance system used in the vehicle. The system collected range data from the five forward-facing ultrasonic sensors placed at the front of the vehicle. Based on these sensors, relevant "dead zones" were established to regulate directional control of the car. Here, a dead zone refers to a sector of the joystick drive within which the input will be ignored. This is designed to prevent a user from steering into an obstacle. As a detected obstacle gets closer to the car, the dead zone will increase in size, as more dramatic turns will be necessary to circumnavigate the obstacle. A diagram of the deadzone locations is shown below.

The final version is highlighted in the video below.