Japanese Researcher Unveils Wheelchair Steered Through Nintendo Labo

One Japanese inventor reprogrammed the Toy-Con Motorbike to electronically move a 13-year-old’s wheelchair.

The Nintendo Labo is a versatile DIY platform that gives players the freedom to create and program their own devices using their Nintendo Switch. But one Japanese researcher is amazing the internet after he turned a Nintendo Labo Toy-Con into a remote control for a wheelchair.

Ory Laboratory CEO Kentaro Yoshifuji turned to Twitter on Tuesday, unveiling a wheelchair Toy-Con for a 13-year-old wheelchair user with a heart condition, according to a Google translation of his tweet.

Yoshifuji, who creates electric wheelchair inventions, was able to program the Toy-Con Motorbike to steer the 13-year-old’s wheelchair. Not unlike the default Toy-Con Motorbike’s controls, the 13-year-old uses the Nintendo Switch and its Joy-Cons to move forward, stop, and turn. By steering the wheelchair with the Labo, its user can move on his own without requiring any physical labor beyond steering with the cardboard device.

The Labo is a pretty versatile toolkit, and internet users are constantly finding new ways to experiment with it. Some Labo owners are even trying to “speedrun” its games, with one Twitch streamer even finishing the Toy-Con Robot’s 15 different challenges in just 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, one website called “Labotopia,” lets users collect and share their Nintendo Labo projects with the world. The Verge previously created a “Toy-Con Guitar” by reprogramming a Toy-Con with the Toy-Con Garage, a versatile program that lets Labo users experiment with their Labo kits. The Nintendo Labo may require a bit of physical labor to assemble its Toy-Cons, but once they’re put together, the possibilities are literally endless.

H/T Nintendo Life