How often have you felt the burden of your luggage while boarding flights at airports or train stations? Most of us prefer to pack most of our small world into our bags, which leads you to tag along with a heavy luggage piece until you settle or reach your destination. Chinese firm ForwardX gave some thought behind this issue and came up with a luggage trolley that can fend for itself while you are busy checking the information board.
Called the CX-1, the smart luggage trolley was unveiled at CES 2018. Branded as the world’s first self-driving carry-on, the trolley makes use of several smart technologies that have formed the base of autonomous cars. The trolley has a camera mounted on it to give its ‘brain’ a 170-degree wide-angle view, which is combined with facial recognition algorithms to swiftly follow its owner at 7 miles per hour. The trolley can detect obstacles and make way for itself in a crowded place. It can even identify certain gestures to understand when the user wants it to follow or stay behind. In case it loses track of the owner, it lets it know through a wristband that vibrates to notify the same. The wristband also acts as a tracker for the trolley to come back to the owner.
Apart from its ‘smartness’, the CX-1 also has a built-in lithium-ion battery that can also charge your smartphone or tablet — good for those who are constantly on the move. The CX-1 will be available to the world through a crowdfunding campaign later this year and is expected to be priced around $300-$400.
