Little Driver

Every time we went out, my son would point at the cars on the road and tell me he wanted to drive one too. Once, we came across a car show at VivoCity. He climbed into almost every car on display, sat in the driver's seat, both hands on the wheel, eyes on the road ahead, going nowhere at full speed. He would not get down until he had "driven" every single one.

He really, really loves cars.

So I thought: why not let him try?

A wheel that answers back

I build machines for a living, robots mostly. This was the first one I built for someone who would actually sit down and drive it.

I gave him a real steering wheel that turns, a pedal under his foot, a switch for the wipers, and a Raspberry Pi, a computer the size of a credit card, hidden in a box. Turn the wheel, press the pedal, and the box answers back: an engine revving, a horn, a siren wailing. All kinds of cars, all in one box.

He sat there for hours. He never went anywhere, and he was driving the whole time.

The city he knows

After a while I started thinking again. What if he could actually drive somewhere? Not a made-up city. His city: the roads we take every day, the bus stop where we wait, the buildings he points at from the back seat, the places we have been together.

So I started building him a world. It is made from real maps of Singapore, so the streets run where they really run and the bus stops stand where they really stand, with the landmarks everyone here knows along the way. One piece at a time, the places he knows moved into the computer.

Now he holds his own steering wheel, drives off, and goes to the places we have been.

The best part is not the graphics. It is that he always knows exactly where he wants to go.

Everyone's turn

One day the kids next door saw what we had made. Of course they wanted a turn. And that made me think: why should it only be my son?

So we are putting Little Driver online, for every child who wants to drive: paint your own car in your favourite colour, drive down the streets you know, step into the buildings along the way. Next, we want families to add their own neighbourhood to the map, so the next child who drives past recognises something too. We share the places, never the children: no names, no photos, nothing that shows whose home is whose.

It all began with a little boy who wanted to drive, and a dad who thought: well, why don't we give it a try?

That is how Little Driver began.