Learn how one awesome MIT student built his very own Mario Kart.
It must be super rad being a student at MIT, that’s short for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You get to be around some really smart people, turn an office building into a fully-colorized Tetris game, and now by way of a resident student, build a go-kart inspired by Super Mario Kart, which to my knowledge is the granddad of every video game kart-racer up to date (my Google-fu has failed me on this one).
This speedy little kart above comes from Charles Guan, a mechanical engineering wiz who’s love of the robot-fighting TV show, Battlebots (fun-fact: three of the Discovery Channel’s MythBusters’ are former competitors), inspired Charles to pursue a career in the field of robotics. Checking out his blog, it’s quite clear that Charles has a mad-scientist knack for building; this specific creation, the Chibikart, took him a total of three weeks to make.
And all from scratch, I should remind you. From the metal frame, to the steering, and brakes, each part of the Chibikart were assembled by Charles’s own hands, who no doubt worked tirelessly – and probably against good hygiene – to see full completion. He even, for the sake of Do It Yourself, documented every step along the way on his blog, showing what individual parts he used in the construction and how.
There’s a lot of hard mechanical speak going on in those directions, so a project of this kind probably isn’t for newbies or anyone who’s extremely allergic to techno-babble (I think I need to go lie down and put a hot towel across my head, Ferris Bueller-style). But if you’re not intimidated by this, go forth and build your heart out. Just one thing though, you’ll need approximately $1300-$1750 dollars – at least from what Charles thinks – for parts.
Ouchies! I know. Life sucks sometimes. Hey, but at least you can watch Charles’s Chibikart in beautiful motion as it zips down the testing grounds at MIT. Go ahead, you totally need to see it in action.
Yeah. It doesn’t look at all Super Mario Kart-ish, I getcha, but it is only a prototype in a sense, so use your imaginations, okay? (Thanks.) And be sure to stick with Walyou for more geeky-trappings, like this cool Princess Leia Hoodie or these 14 kickass Avengers’ illustrations that are, well, kickass. Duh.
