ITKAN

What We Offer

Go-Baby-Go.

A battery-powered ride-on car, rebuilt around one child, so a kid who cannot yet drive a wheelchair can move and play on their own.

What it is

Go-Baby-Go is a national effort to modify off-the-shelf ride-on cars for children with limited mobility. A powered wheelchair often comes years after a child is ready to be moving, exploring and keeping up with other children. A modified car closes some of that gap now.

The modifications are real engineering rather than decoration: the foot pedal is replaced with a control a child can actually operate, the seat is rebuilt for the support they need, and the frame is adapted around how that particular child sits, reaches and holds themselves up.

Who it is for
Children aged 3 to 12 who cannot move independently
Cost to the family
Free of charge

Cars built

Azah driving her finished ride-on car outdoors, hands on the wheel

Azah

2024 · Houston

Eight years old. Custom seating, accessible controls and supports built around her specifically, delivered in person.

Read the story

How it came together

Two students sitting on the workshop floor with the car, its wheels removed beside them
Stripped down. Every ride-on car starts by coming apart.
The car's body shell, freshly painted green, drying on a covered bench
The body, repainted.
Close-up of a student soldering wiring into a control board mounted on the car
New wiring and a control board, so the accelerator could move to where Azah could reach it.
A student fitting the rear axle and wheels back onto the car
The rear axle going back on.
A group of ITKAN students crouched around the car working on it together
Most of it happened like this, on the floor, in a group.
Two ITKAN students standing beside the finished car with its white support frame
Finished, with the seating frame fitted.

And then she drove it.

Who builds them

ITKAN students spend the competition season designing, machining and wiring robots to a specification. The CAD, the fabrication and the electronics are identical here. What changes is who the deadline belongs to, and that the thing being built has to work for one particular person rather than score points.

Request a car.

For children aged 3 to 12 who cannot move independently. Fill in the request form and tell us about your child, and we will come back to you.

Start the request

Free of charge. Questions before you start go to admin@itkan.one.