PRE2017 4 Groep5

Group members:

• Ahmed Ahres
• Quinten Maes
• Hugo Melchers
• Christel van den Nieuwenhuizen
• Frank de Veld

Case: Self following suitcase

In order to make (business) travel more efficient, it would be useful to create a self-following suitcase for travelers, but this idea can also be used by example elderly when buying groceries or by other people who have to regularly transport objects. However, special attention has to be given to subjects like security, privacy, battery life and obstacle avoidance.

State of the Art

So far, a few companies have already tackled the case of self following suitcases. At several events such devices have been shown or demonstrated, but so far none have been sold to particulars yet. The companies currently working on a self following suitcase are:

• Olive robotics owned by IKAP Robotics from Iran (http://oliverobotics.com/)
• Travelmate robotics from the United States (https://travelmaterobotics.com/)
• ForwardX from China (https://www.forwardx.com/)
• Cowarobot owned by LeMoreLab from China (http://en.cowarobot.com/en/r1/robotics.htm)
• 90FUN owned by Shanghai Runmi Technology Co., Ltd. from China (https://www.90fun.us/puppy1)
• NUA Robotics from Israel (http://unbouncepages.com/nuarobotics/)

It is important to note that all of these companies, the parent companies included, have been founded in the previous 3 years. Two of these companies, Travelmate and Cowarobot, needed crowdfunding from the crowdfunding website indiegogo.com in order to be able to produce their suitcases (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/travelmate-a-fully-autonomous-suitcase-and-robot and https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cowarobot-r1-the-first-and-only-robotic-suitcase). Both companies had delivery dates around end 2016 / begin 2017, but both experienced production delays and have not yet delivered the suitcases to their customers. Furtheremore, Travelmate has doubled to tripled their prices compared to their original plan (€400 to €600), which was comparable to the price of the one from Cowarobot. Nevertheless, both companies received an overwhelming amount of support from their backers; 400% of the necessary funds was received by Cowarobot and 1600% of the necessary funds were received by Travelmate. The other four companies do not give specifications on either the release date or the price, only NUA Robotics and ForwardX hope to release it at the end of this year.

Also interesting is that five of these six companies claim to have made the first self following suitcase; ForwardX is not claiming this. Additionally, NUA Robotics is a very small company with only 2-10 employees and their site is hosted by the third party company Unbounce; the company does not look very professional.