Although not all of its products have been doing so recently, Nintendo’s Wii Fit balance board just keeps on hitting the mark, and not just in gaming circles. The American Heart Association is backing it. The armed forces have plans to let their recruits get fit with it. Universities are even using it to diagnose sports-related concussions. Now researchers at Itchaca College are investigating the potential for the Wii Fit board to mobilize unsteady infants and special needs children unable to control their physical movements. The research team have been testing out their ideas by sitting real live babies on baby seats, placed on top of a Wii Fit board, on top of a motorized chair. The board senses the babies’ movements and then steers the chair as the bub leans leans in different directions. An on-board sonar radar can tell when the chair is going to hit an obstacle, and will steer its passenger to safety, and twitchy parents can take charge with an override joystick. Shame it’s just for babies. Whizzing about on a motorized chair sounds like my kind of fun.

The research is still underway, but the results of preliminary tests are available online at the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America.
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