Even if you live just a few blocks from the grocery store, odds are you don’t walk there to do your shopping. After all, it’s no fun to carry your bags home all by yourself. That’s the problem that Piaggio is trying to solve with its cargo robots, and the Gitamini is the latest rolling helper to hit the streets. I wanted to see just how practical a cargo bot actually is, so I put the Gitamini through its paces.
I put the Piaggio Gitamini to the test.
The Gitamini isn’t the first so-called, “following robot,” from Piaggio, but it is the most affordable. Priced at $2,495, it’s designed to follow you around wherever you go, carting a modest haul in the process. And while it’s packed with tech, it is explicitly designed to be effortlessly user friendly. You don’t even need to control it from an app, which seems more or less mandatory with every other kind of tech these days.
Dimensions: 17.9 x 16.5 x 18.9 inches | Cargo space: 1000 cu. inches | Carrying capacity: 20 pounds | Top speed: 6 mph | Range: 21 miles | Charge time: 2 hours | Operating temp: 10 – 110 degrees F
Best for:
- Carting one or two bags of groceries home from the bodega
- Hands-free strolling though the mall
- Tech enthusiasts who want to play with a cool new toy
Skip if:
- Your neighborhood is laid out so that Gitamini can’t roll door-to-door on its own
- You’re concerned about the awkwardness of being followed by a robot in public
Gitamini Features
Getting Started Is Effortless
To get started, I took the robot out of its shipping container and charged it up. After that, I simply turned it on (there’s a power button in back) and then, standing in front of it, I touched a button in front to wake it up. After a moment, it sprang to life and started following me around.
Notice that there was no smartphone pairing in that process; the Gitamini isn’t following your phone via Bluetooth. It simply follows you.
The Piaggio Gitamini has large wheels to handle bumpy terrain and has a modest cargo hold on top.
That said, I should point out that there’s a mobile app that helps you keeps track of the miles your robot has traveled, check its charge level, configure various settings and get notifications. In my case, the “loaner,” robot I tested arrived ready to go without using the app.
Gitamini Follows You Like a Puppy
My first adventure was to deliver some random supplies to a friend who lives two blocks away. Like ED-209 (the goofy stop-motion bi-pedal droid from the movie Robocop), Gitamini can’t handle steps or stairs, so I carried it out of the house and placed it in my driveway. Thankfully, that was easy—the robot’s body has recessed handholds, and the whole thing weighs just 28 pounds when empty.
After setting it down on the other side of my porch, I simply started walking to my friend’s house and Gitamini trailed a few feet behind me.
Gitamini did surprisingly well, given the uneven nature of the sidewalk. For the most part, it kept up with me, rolling across highly irregular gaps that sent the bot bumping along the sidewalk and even over occasional tree roots. The first trek wasn’t flawless, though; one particularly nasty sidewalk crack caused Gitamini to lose its balance and topple onto its side. I set it back on its wheels and it trudged on, no worse for wear.
The Gitamini can hold one or two bags’ worth of cargo, up to 20 pounds.
That initial experience taught me most of Gitamini’s practical limits; it’s really good at traversing flat ground, but bumpy and irregular terrain can be a problem. In other words, don’t take it camping, hiking or off-roading.
Solid Performance—But For A Nonessential Gadget
Using the Gitamini around Michigan’s quaint, walkable town of Birmingham as well as around an indoor shopping mall really highlighted how well it works for its very specific mission: To follow you around with no additional instructions aside from pressing a single button. After waking it up, Gitamini uses its cameras to identify you (waist down—it doesn’t do face recognition) and then starts rolling. Even in a crowded and hectic shopping mall, the robot never lost track of me or veered off to follow a stranger. At the same time, it’s smart enough not to run into people that crossed between us. I didn’t have to worry about it barreling into children or running into anyone’s legs.
If I needed to put something in the cargo hold or take something out, it was a simple matter to stop walking, turn around and approach the bot.
The Gitamini has a collection of cameras to help it navigate around and stay focused on following … [+]
On the other hand, I’ll be frank: It was deeply embarrassing to have a robot follow me around in public. I felt like a geeky goofball, compounded by the fact that the cargo bay really doesn’t hold much—a bag or two of groceries at most. It felt… gratuitous. As cool as the concept of a cargo bot might be to my science fiction-loving brain, I don’t feel especially comfortable using one in real life.
Piaggio Gitamini: Verdict
Weirdly Satisfying
Gitamini is, as the name implies, a smaller (and more affordable) version of Piaggio’s original Gita. If you love the idea of the mini, you can also get the larger version which boasts a 40 pound payload. The tradeoff? A much shorter 12-mile range.
As I mentioned, I’d be kind of mortified to use the Gitamini in a shopping mall or around town without the excuse that, “no, it’s not mine, I’m reviewing it for Forbes.” I can think of a great use for Gitamini, though—to haul picnic supplies from the car to the gazebo at the local park.
All that said, Gitamini really does everything Piaggio says it does, and having a robot carry stuff around for me can also be weirdly satisfying.
My Expertise
I have been a technology journalist since the 1990s with countless writing credits at publications as diverse as Forbes, PC World, Digital Camera Magazine, CNET, TechHive and Insider (not to mention authoring nearly three dozen books). I even wrote two books about robots, including Robot Invasion: 7 Cool and Easy Robot Projects. As the executive editor at Forbes Vetted, I help writers and editors choose the right products to recommend to readers.
