Earlier this year, my co-author, Malay Upadhyay, and I released our new book, The AI Dilemma, a leadership guide to assess enterprise AI maturity and explore AI's impact in diverse industries. Over the past year, during COVID-19, I have been writing a series of blogs for CEOs and Board Directors and executive leadership teams to advance their knowledge in AI having develop a comprehensive AI set of skills that I called The Brain Trust. Over fifty skills were defined with examples of AI innovations. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Why I have been writing these blogs is to drive an increased sense of urgency of board directors and leadership teams to internalize that human civilization as we know it is changing at a clip that is unprecedented in human history.

Segway is branching out from its eponymous'personal transporters' with a lineup of delivery robots. Ninebot, the parent of Segway, is debuting its first-ever autonomous delivery robot, called Loomo Delivery, alongside a new scooter. Loomo is designed to make deliveries in buildings and malls, using artificial intelligence to make sure they're dropped off at the right location. Segway is branching out from its'personal transporters' with a lineup of delivery robots. The company envisions Loomo being used for last-mile delivery with food, packages and other items.

First revealed at CES 2016, the Segway Loomo is a $1,700 hoverboard. It operates much like those that came before it. You step onto the self-balancing platform, lean forward to accelerate, lean back to slow and reverse. But unlike its predecessors, turning the Loomo is done by pressing the knees against the unit's center, leaning left and right, which I found to be a far more intuitive method than lifting and pressing the footpads. The Loomo is surprisingly stable, even when leaning back to stop quickly, though the company does insist that users wear a helmet while riding.

Segway was founded by renowned inventor Dean Kamen in 1999, and by 2001, the first Segway Personal Transporter (PT) was introduced to the public. Over the next few years, Segway introduced updates to core products, including its first three-wheel personal transportation device, the SE-3 Patroller, for the public safety market in 2014. However, in 2015, Segway and Ninebot, Inc. formed a partnership, focusing on research and development, manufacturing, sales and service in the short-distance transportation industry. This led to the introduction of the Ninebot by Segway miniPRO, in December 2015. Learning to ride a Segway in Toronto's historic Distillery District.

Robots have become smarter and more useful over the last year alone, and Segway Robotics is turning to developers for ideas on more meaningful applications for its Loomo bot. For three days starting February 10th, the company is co-hosting the MIT Hacking Medicine Robotics hackathon in Singapore to create eldercare-based uses for Loomo. The winning teams' creations will be tested in Singapore, and successful applications will be rolled out globally. In addition to coming up with helpful applications for Loomo, the event's organizers are also hoping to get participant feedback on how to improve the robot. Segway unveiled the latest developer version of Loomo at CES this year, and announced an array of partners that includes MIT, BMW and Intel.