No matter if you’re traveling all the time or rarely, carrying around luggage can be annoying, especially if it’s heavy and if your suitcase can’t be easily maneuvered. We reported about an inflatable travel bag before, but there is an innovation in town. Travelmate is your personal suitcase robot that follows you around.
We’ve seen shopping carts that were built to follow you around before, but this is the first time we came across a suitcase robot that can autonomously move through crowds to follow its owner. The Travelmate can move either vertically or horizontally. Why put it down to move horizontally? For instance, to place your backpack or another bag on it for your suitcase buddy to carry it for you. The robotic suitcase is also able to identify objects and avoid crashing into them.
Your new travel companion
With a companion app on Android or iOS, you are also able to control your Travelmate, search of it, or get data from the internal scales and sensors. Have you ever been preparing for a flight and had to make sure not to pack too much? No more manual weighing, just check the scale of your Travelmate. I think that’s a quite useful feature for a suitcase to have if you ask me.
So what other features does the Travelmate provide you with on your trips? It comes with a standard TSA Bluetooth-enabled lock so it can be checked by security staff without issues. The Bluetooth 4.1 module allows for long-lasting and consistent connections to devices. The battery of your Travelmate can be easily removed and wirelessly charged. On the other hand, you can use USB 3.0 to charge your devices if you’re in a pinch.
Loaded with features
The multi-colored LED lights provide status information such as battery level or moving direction. Travelmate comes with a GPS chip that helps you track it down, even though it hopefully won’t go missing. If you’d like to leverage GPS on something else, you can remove the chip and attach it to something else.
The Travelmate looks to be very useful, but it comes at a price like most of the good things in the tech universe. Travelmate is available in three different sizes that are priced at $1099, $1295, and $1495. You can order it on the official Travelmate Robotics website.
YouTube: Travelmate – The Robotic Suitcase That Follows You Around
Photo credit: All shown images are owned by Travelmate Robotics and were provided as part of a press kit.
