Inventor brings Mario Kart to real life with HoloLens AR technology

Ian Charnas, the inventor of those amazing windshield wipers that "dance" to your car's music, is up to yes good again (the opposite of "no good"). He's made a real-life Mario Kart video game using electric go-karts and augmented reality (!).

Ian explains:

In this augmented reality racing game demo, players zoom around a track in real-life go-karts and pick up virtual power-ups to boost their kart's speed or slow down the competition.

The virtual power-ups are generated by a Microsoft HoloLens augmented reality headset on each player. The speed boosts (and reductions) are provided by some electronics I created that extend an existing go-kart system with this functionality.

[If you want to know more about it works, he explains it further on Hackaday.]

Ian is hoping that there's a demand for this real-life Mario Kart. He's got all the pieces, including a provisional patent, he just needs the right partner to get it off the ground in a bigger way.

Thanks, Mark!