A child needed a wheelchair. These Blackstone Academy students built one out of a toy car

PAWTUCKET – When the final bell of the school day strikes at Blackstone Academy on Tuesday afternoons, most students rush out the front doors to catch a ride home and enjoy a break from class. A handful, however, linger in a room downstairs, put on safety glasses, pick up power drills and get ready to work.

In a windowless room under bright LED lights, they tinker over a white ride-on toy car – the kind that looks like a miniature Jeep Wrangler. Over the last month and a half, the students, who are part of Blackstone Academy’s robotics class and after-school club, have been retrofitting the car with dual motors, a joystick for steering and driving, caster wheels and a chair to turn it into a functioning wheelchair for a child with disabilities.

The project is part of GoBabyGo!, a program that provides modified ride-on toy cars to help children with limited mobility. The program started at the University of Delaware when Prof. Cole Galloway, now at Baylor University, was looking for an affordable way to help children with cognitive or physical disabilities gain mobility. He found ride-on toy cars were much cheaper and lighter than motorized wheelchairs, which can cost thousands of dollars and aren't available for younger children. There are now dozens of GoBabyGo! chapters in universities across the country and various countries.

On a recent afternoon, Nithesh Krishan, a junior at Blackstone Academy, oversaw his fellow students as they worked on the car.

“This is a mini computer that communicates between the joystick and the wheels. These are the motor controls that actually control the two wheels,” Krishan said pointing at the wires and electrical parts tucked beneath the car’s seat.

Benjamin Phelps, a recent graduate of Brown University, and his twin brother, Joshua, have been mentoring the students throughout the work. Phelps said the Brown Design Workshop at Brown University provided the funding and the materials for the car at a cost of about $350.

The brothers are impressed by how quickly their pupils have picked up the necessary engineering skills to program and modify the car.

“A lot of GoBabyGo! cars around the world are built by college students, and here it was high school students who had learned to solder the day before. And now they're following instructions and rewiring the circuit,” Benjamin Phelps said.

The Phelps brothers know intimately the instructions the students at Blackstone Academy are following. That's because the twins wrote them when they were high school students in their hometown of Eugene, Oregon. While many GoBabyGo! cars use a steering wheel and a button to drive the cars, the Phelps brothers noticed some children struggled with the standard setup.

“We realized in talking with physical therapists that the kids couldn't really steer the cars, and the button is very different from the joystick that most power wheelchairs use,” Phelps said.

They decided to design a 3D-printed joystick to control the cars. Phelps said the joystick functions as a trainer so children can practice for insurance-mandated tests to get approved for a motorized wheelchair.

The Blackstone Academy students, however, have gone above and beyond, said Phelps. They are customizing the car to fit the functional needs of the child who will use it, including using food-safe silicone on the seat’s guardrails and installing a bigger seat. A working stereo and headlights add character to the vehicle.

Phelps hopes the experience will inspire the students to pursue engineering careers to help others.

“When I first got to see a GoBabyGo car that I had built get delivered … that was when I realized that I wanted to do rehabilitation engineering and adaptive technology,” said Phelps, who along with his brother will start a master’s engineering program at Stanford University in the fall.

For many of the students, working on the car has been a chance to learn new skills and get exposed to engineering.

“It’s been a learning experience,” said Victoria Benton, a sophomore at Blackstone Academy, “I learned to rewire it. So I can say, ‘I worked on the car!’”

The students will present the car to the family next week. While they have enjoyed building the car, this is what they are looking forward to most.

“It's been a really interesting process, but I think the thing I'm most excited about is just actually seeing someone able to use this thing that we've built,” Krishan said.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Blackstone Academy students turn toy car into wheelchair