Hackaday Prize Entry: A Go-Kart For A Special Child

ScottCar is a go-kart for a special Kid and is [Alain]’s entry in this years Hackaday Prize. Will it race to victory?

The concept behind ScottCar is simple: There isn’t much out there for disabled kids when it comes to go-karts. [Alain Mauer] has an autistic son who isn’t quite capable of driving a Go-Kart as he would have trouble using pedals and brakes. He didn’t let that stand in his way, so he built a go-kart for his 11-year-old son. It incorporates an automatic braking system. In situations where the kart speeds up going down, brakes are automatically applied, slowing it down to a normal pace. It also features a remote emergency brake which would avoid crashes while supervising playtime. The braking system uses bike disc brakes controlled by an Arduino Nano. A Siemens Motor with a screw drive is what propels the vehicle, powered by a 12V Battery with a healthy 7.5Ah capacity.

The project is being released under GNU General Public License version 3, Will we be seeing ScottCar racing towards the Hackaday prize?

9 thoughts on “Hackaday Prize Entry: A Go-Kart For A Special Child

  1. very nice idea, I hope that it works out as intended, even if it doesn’t win any prize.
    I wonder (not in a negative way, just questioning myself) if Scott notices “remote interference” as a disturbance. I have worked with some autistic children long time ago and it was always tricky to tell what kind of information they processed in which way.

    1. A low child to adult ratio in a family like environment helps best,
      Source:
      Post care-home entry childhood issues and having been diagnosed with ASD around the age of 3.

      Ideally no more than 3x young in foster (Parenthood is different).

      From a schooling point of view, there are kids that the parents leave to their own devices and neglect to morally teach and/or discipline (Positive active, via role-modelling): These kids start to show forms of autism as a result of child neglect (and sometimes from abuse). They’ll likely be the ones to act up, stir problems, throw tantrums seemingly for no reason, etc. They are likely to fall behind their grades, try foul play against teachers, etc.

      This may not always be the case, it’ll be a good idea to find out if the child was taken into care, ask all about and try to help them recall memories of their parent(s).

      In my case, a group of man-hating socialworkers had I taken from a stable father (Prim-proper all posh leathers-N-Harly-Davidson motor born in St Albans: Wouldn’t even harm a fly), had 2 years of instability before going to a carehome that I only just found reasoning in the care-workers’ actions throughout based on a doctors’ report the social workers hid from me until I finally turn 27!!!…
      The care-workers were lied to completely, thus had trust issues against me: They treated me like I was the second coming of Hannibal Lector! as though they were trying everything to “stop” it.

      Many people have gone through these issues and whilst most survived (Still alive: i.e. not killed by parents/care-workers/suicide), a fair few people seemingly have not made it mentally unscarred: Not even myself… You just have to read some of the out of place rants on some of the HaD posts.

  2. I’m really not liking the idea of mounting the brake disc on a plastic wheel/hub!!!
    Since yo mention using the breaking as an overspeed control, even with some sort of metal, intermediate hub,
    I can just imagine a loosening issue
    if not an outright failure from distortion or stretching, causing a separation.

    I’m also concerned with any attempts to “key” or attache an adapter to the wheel & axel, then relying on that to hold the braking (or driving) force. But particularly the braking forces.

    Please find and use a set of metal wheels for this.

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