Gadgetory

it is so cold outside today not the kind of thing you want to be carrying groceries but I can keep my hands in my pockets because I got this little buddy to help me this is cheetah a robot designed to follow you around and carry your stuff 40 pounds of stuff to be exact I took a prototype bot out for a spin on the streets of New York City to see what it was like to have my own robot helper buddy Gina was created by Italian company piaggio you know them as the makers of the Vespa scooter but this two foot tall cargo bot was born from a research team based in Boston the only thing is to get it to follow you you have to wear this belt they're working on getting that technology to be a little smaller this not so sexy spaceman fanny pack is loaded with cameras that are mapping out the area around me there are also cameras on all sides of the jito the system blends the data together so it knows where I am going while also not crashing into people walking between us the team is working on shrinking this belt down is just something you just have to clip on a pocket my demo cheetah behaved only when I walked slowly but it has the potential to follow its owner on a run or a bike ride traveling up to 22 miles per hour if you keep it at walking speed the battery's gonna last eight hours now this being a prototype my trip was a bit of a bumpy ride sometimes it had trouble syncing with my belt and someone from the team would have to jump in to steer it with a remote control one of the wheels wouldn't light up and it also got a bit banged up following you through doors is still a work in progress that said you better be going somewhere that has an elevator it weighs around 50 pounds so you do not want to lunge this upstairs when you're ready to unload there is a fingerprint scanner to keep your stuff secure and alarms are gonna sound off if someone tries to mess with your bot with its zero turning radius the nimble cheetah has potential to be helpful in businesses like hospitals or hotels it can also be pre-programmed with a map of a facility so it can travel a sec it's being tested in enterprise situations over the next year and after that we could see a version for the consumer side so you may want one to carry groceries home or schlep those heavy textbooks to class so are you ready to live in a future with robot pets that follow you around because it's not a fantasy anymore for Sina I'm Bridget Carey