Piaggio a company more commonly known for its Vespa scooters and Moto Guzzi motorcycles is entering to a whole new territory. Piaggio is announcing a new division called Piaggio Fast Forward specializing in robotics. Their first product is called Gita and is a personal service cargo delivery robot with some innovative technologies.

Gita has innovative design that allows it to have zero degree turn radius. It stands at 66cm tall and can carry loads up to 18 kilograms with top speed of 35kph.



The innovation however is not the design but the underlying technology. Gita is designed to be Your personal cargo robot. Gita is designed to follow its owner wherever it goes trailing just behind the owner whether they are walking or riding a bicycle. Gita's innovative 3D mapping algorithms use dual cameras and ultrasonic range finder to map the surroundings and navigate through crowds and corners. Gita is also equipped with four fisheye cameras to give it a 360 degree view of the surroundings. Wherever You go Gita follows. But the innovations do not stop there. Once user has "taught" Gita the route it can navigate the route autonomously by using the mapping it has created. Eventually the idea is that multiple Gita's working in the same area could share information thus improving the performance.

The pricing and availability of Gita are still unknown but Piaggio will start doing field tests with the robot during 1st half 2017 in controlled environments. Will the future be robots following us around carrying our groceries and other cargo remains to be seen but Gita is a great example what great design and innovations in technology can bring us in the future.

Strategy Analytics Emerging Device Strategies (EDS) Service follows robotics markets closely as we are living in exiting new era of emerging personal service robotics.