This little robot follows you around carrying all your stuff

Fed up of a backpack, messenger bag or gym bag cramping your style when out and about? The makers of the Vespa scooter have come up with a smart little robot caddy to solve that problem for you.

Italian scooter company Piaggio’s “startup” design group Piaggio Fast Forward built the Gita, a bright blue orb-shaped cargo robot designed to follow you wherever you go. Gita isn’t just designed to follow you though, it can also navigate its way around towns and cities on its own so you could load it up with all your unwanted baggage and then send it home so you can travel home or out completely unburdened.

Navigating via multiple cameras embedded into its bright blue shell, Gita can hold up to 18kg of goods and run for around 8 hours on a single charge. Interestingly it’s also capable of hitting speeds of 22mph, meaning it can still follow you if you’re cycling.

If you’re worried about someone intercepting your Gita and cracking it open to steal your belongings, there’s a biometric lock on the top that’s backed up by a passcode for extra two-step security. Those cameras and sensors also the Gita identify where it is, meaning if you tried to steal one, there’s a complete record of what happened to it and where it went.

Interestingly, Piaggio see Gita as a transportation device to help alleviate the movement of heavy loads around environments like hotels and resorts, airports, warehouses and campus buildings. It’s one reason why the follow mode was implemented into the device in the first place and why the Gita will begin a pilot test on US college campuses later this year to help maintenance teams shift their tools around. Ultimately it’s something to make life easier for workers who generally have to shift heavy tools or goods around to do their jobs.

Piaggio isn’t ruling out potential consumer applications for Gita though. Speaking to TechCrunch, Piaggio Fast Forward’s CCO Greg Lynn explained that the inspiration for Gita came from helping people to move around more freely.

“We come from a world of lightweight, two and three-wheeled cycles, scooters and mini trucks. Everything we do is lightweight and made for highly congested cities, like Bangkok or Hanoi, where traffic is a real problem. We wanted to extend people’s movement and encourage them to move more freely and easily, even in congested environments.”