Some little ones who need it most are getting a nice jumpstart on playtime.

They cannot yet walk, due to their physical disabilities or impairments, but they can whip around inside an electric toy fire truck outfitted like a mini-wheelchair.

They “run” and play like other kids. They impress classmates with their cool wheels. Sometimes they even give their parents fits by putting around and getting into things.

For such life-changing mobility, these children at the Child Development & Research Center in Eugene can thank some very clever older kids.

The South Eugene Robotics Team, an after-school club started 11 years ago at South Eugene High School, retrofits “ride-on” toy cars — like those by Fisher-Price — for more comfort and maneuverability.

Not just a bucket seat, but a backrest for body control.

No ordinary steering wheel, but a joystick for 360-degree turns.

No lurching starts, but a microchip for gradual acceleration and programmable speed.

And no mere forward/reverse, but a second motor for differential steering.

“A lot of times, the first thing they do is push the joystick to the side and spin around and get really dizzy,” says Benjamin Phelps, who, along with identical 17-year-old twin brother Joshua, designed and programmed the robotic club’s prototype “Go Baby Go” car.

“Every kid should be able to get dizzy,” chimes in lead designer Joshua. “That’s just something they like to do: They like to spin. What kid doesn’t like to spin?”

For rolling out such cool wheels, students in the South Eugene Robotics Team get volunteer-of-the-month honors.

This heartwarming story is not without a lump in your throat, too.

The idea for getting tykes with disabilities into powered toy cars began with Dr. James “Cole” Galloway at the University of Delaware. He observed that children lacking mobility often spent recess time alone: perhaps talking with teachers in the sandbox, but isolated from peers running around.

So Galloway gave the immobile preschoolers a leg up socially by starting “Go Baby Go” in 2012. His modified toy cars, with push-button starts and back supports, got kids rolling at ages before they typically could qualify for a wheelchair.

Demand soon spread across the nation. But it’s when it got to Oregon that Go Baby Go caught a whole new gear.

Sam Logan, an assistant professor at Oregon State University’s College of Public Health and Human Sciences, brought the program to Oregon and later pitched it to Dr. Randy Phelps of Eugene. Logan could not have picked a better guy.

Phelps is not only a developmental behavioral pediatrician at the Child Development and Rehabilitation Center on the UO campus, but he’s the dad of Joshua and Benjamin.

As in, the twin inventors who made a solar-powered seed spreader at the ages of 4, who later developed a telegraph system between their bedrooms and who were building robots and the like by middle school.

“I thought the boys would enjoy this,” Phelps says in understatement.

Their assignment: take the basic Go Baby Go car and modify it for improvements suggested by physical therapists who work with Phelps.

Like the Wright brothers, Joshua and Benjamin combine their talents. Joshua likes to invent; Benjamin thrives in computer-assisted design.

“We added a second (electric) motor so that each wheel is controlled independently,” Joshua says. Combined with caster front wheels, the differential steering allows 360-degree maneuvers. Controlled acceleration, rather than lurching starts, comes through a microchip the twins added for programmable motor speed.

The Phelps brothers converted steering to joystick control, allowing children to whip around like never before. “When the boys made the joystick-controlled truck, there were none out there on the Internet,” says dad/doctor Phelps. “Now some other folks have replicated that, but it started with them.”

Once the Phelps twins had their modified Go Baby Go fire truck, they turned to fellow robotics club members for engineering improvements and build-outs.

SERT member Alyssa Gao, now 16, took the project a step further by also having middle-school students assemble the trucks during summer workshops at the Eugene Science Center (formerly the Science Factory). Finished trucks (probably about 20 all together now) go to children in theChild Development & Research Center, who get to keep them for use at school and at home.