New use case for autonomous vehicles (environment)

[jade408]

This a really great idea:

Personal delivery robots.

Why Piaggio built Gita, a cargo-carrying robot, to follow in your footsteps

Gita looks like a carbon fiber take on the exercise ball with tires in a meridian position, and multiple cameras embedded within its shell. It can follow a person, or roll autonomously in an environment it has already mapped. At 26 inches tall, the Gita can carry up to 40 pounds at a time and has a maximum speed of 22 miles per hour, so it can keep up with a person on foot or riding a bike. It can run for about 8 hours of continuous use, the company said.

This would be a good way to automate all of the App Delivery services we have right now.

But their other use case is good too! This would make laundry day if you have to go to a laundry mat less annoying.

In the next six months, Piaggio Fast Forward plans to run pilot tests with Gita on different college campuses and in towns in the U.S. The company is not thinking about delivering burritos or groceries, so much. It envisions the Gita assisting maintenance, gardening and custodial workers, and others who must cart heavy things around to get their jobs done on a given day, especially at resorts, senior living and school campuses.

[darkeconomist]

Autonomy is really going to reshape the world as we know it.

At CES, someone was showing off luggage that could follow you around.

Uber and Lyft want to move toward autonomy.

The trucking and air cargo industries are looking at autonomy, too, such that we could be seeing most shipments being moved from the factory to the ship or aircraft to the warehouse to the local distribution center with minimal involvement from people.