Joystick control of a motor go-cart

A motor go-cart was altered such that a disabled child could control it with a single hand via a joystick. This required: (1) selecting power systems to servo the steering, throttle and brakes; (2) building analogue control circuits and amplifiers to drive and control the power systems; (3) designing and building mechanisms to connect the power systems to the various functions on the go-cart; (4) system testing on a group of disabled and steering problems identification; and (5) modifying a second kart using a `mechatronic´ solution. This entailed taking the driver input to a microprocessor which then controlled the servos. The system could be easily reprogrammed to cope with different demands. This enables the control response of the vehicle to the driver input to be simply varied in accordance with the drivers´ skills and abilities and the type of track (i.e. a fast or slow track). For example, the steering sensitivity and the maximum vehicle speed can be programmed for a particular driver