3DRacers Brings the Racetrack to Your Living Room Floor With 3D Printed Cars and Game

Under your bed and over the hills–of your couch cushions–it’s off to the track in your home with 3DRacers!

Rome-based 3DRacers was created by Marco D’Alia and Francesco Murru, gaming and toy enthusiasts who decided to fill the gap left in the toy market today which is being seriously usurped by the gaming market. They wanted to create something gaming oriented, but even more fun than a video game. With 3DRacers, D’Alia explains that they wanted to make a game like Mario Kart that users can actually play on their floor.

“We’d like to see children and people of all ages use their imagination while interacting with the game,” D’Alia told 3DPrint.com. “We designed a car that can race on every surface available in your home, so that you can build your tracks without limits–race over or under sofas, cardboard, tables, and beds.”

To achieve that, they designed a 3D-printable car that has good clearance from the bottom, and can climb carpets or rough terrains. D’Alia and Murru experimented with several configurations of DC motors to achieve the right balance for battery life and power, and different steering mechanisms that are both realistic and durable.

This 3D printed, Arduino-based racing game allows you to:

• Design your car online and choose from over 100,000 variations.
• 3D print your radio controlled car, choosing from various colors and shapes with a web based tool. Download and print!
• Race with your friends, and up to 1000 other players at once, controlling your game with the mobile app or the 3D-printable remote.
• Watch real time scoreboards and lap times.
• Play in battle mode with power-ups and weapons, or SIM Mode with warm-up, pit-stops and realistic tire and fuel consumption.

Each car also has a sensor that detects specially designed gates.

In combining gaming, 3D printing, and an Arduino based control board, with an open-source design, 3DRacers has made a natural progression to what would seem to be the future of the toy and gaming market. Arduino-based designs operate with simple micro-controllers which function on open source computing platforms. They allow information to be read from sensors and devices which will let you take them online. It is a tool used for developing interactive objects.

“We have built a customized Arduino-based board, focused on low power consumption and a small form factor,” says D’Alia. “The cars are fully 3D Printed, and fully open source because we wanted everyone to be able to improve the original design, and be able to reprogram the board and build something new, like say, a tank or an airplane.”

3DRacers will be on display at MakerFaire Rome October 2-5. You can follow 3DRacers at www.facebook.com/3dracers. Have you created any 3D printable cars or games? What do you think of this idea? Let us know in the 3DRacers forum thread on 3DPB.com.