The company is about to begin testing Gita in a number of industrial settings, including factories and theme parks. Piaggio created Piaggio Fast Forward 18 months ago. The sensors, control systems, and electric propulsion used in the new robot could all prove crucial for future Piaggio products, says Michele Colaninno, chairman of the board of Piaggio Fast Forward. Still, as with many of the ideas being tested by transportation companies, including self-driving taxis, semi-automated trucks, and delivery drones, the underlying technology, as well as the potential applications, remain a bit unproven.

Inside an industrial building in Somerville, Massachusetts, I'm watching a robot follow someone around like an eager puppy. The light-blue robot, called Gita, is almost spherical, with two wheels about the size of those you'd find on a mountain bike. A nearby laptop shows the world as perceived by the robot: a "point-cloud" of dots representing the 3-D shape of the room and the hallway outside, generated using a series of cameras attached to the bot's body. Gita was developed by Piaggio, an Italian automotive company that makes various lightweight vehicles but is most famous for making the iconic Vespa scooter. The robot is an experimental new way of transporting stuff.

Ed Baig shows off Gita, a prototype indoor or outdoor robot, designed to help businesses or people carry bags or deliver items. Apparently this robot follows people around and helps them carry things. NEW YORK--There are numerous high-profile efforts to build autonomous self-driving cars. The bright human minds behind Gita have a different sort of vehicle in mind, a large, roundish follow-me robot on wheels that can schlep our stuff while it navigates urban sidewalks and other tight spaces. A 75-pound Gita prototype certainly made quite an impression on passersby as it rolled down New York's busy Madison Avenue. Several people stopped to gawk at Gita and snap pictures during a demonstration, and to ask: What is it?

In the summer months of 2015, Jeffrey Schnapp and a few of his colleagues started collecting rideables. The hoverboard craze was in full swing, and OneWheels and Boosteds were showing up on roads and sidewalks. Schnapp and his co-founders rode, drove, and crashed everything they could find. For Schnapp, a Harvard professor and longtime technologist with a shaved head, pointy goatee, and a distinct Ben Kingsley vibe, this was market research. It goes with you, turns with you, stops with you.

The company has dubbed its squat version of R2D2 "a pet with superpowers" and it will hit the market next year. "It's not about replacing human functions; it's about expanding and augmenting human functions," said Jeffrey Schnapp, chief executive of Piaggio Fast Forward. "Gita is a small vehicle that has machine intelligence that can navigate the world just like you can." It tops out at 22 mph, fast enough to keep up with a bike, but is currently limited to 11 mph, and can carry up to 40 pounds. Packed with cameras and sensors, the Gita can roll after an owner, following along down the sidewalk.

Making a fully autonomous delivery robot (whether it's flying or not) is a very hard problem. Your robot has to be prepared to operate all alone in unstructured environments, and it has to do so both reliably and efficiently. A new robot introduced this week by Piaggio Fast Forward (herein abbreviated "PFF"), a division of Italian vehicle manufacturer Piaggio, is getting in on autonomous stuff-moving, but they're taking a slightly different approach. Rather than try to develop a fully autonomous delivery robot from scratch, PFF is instead starting with something simpler: A pleasingly roundish robot called Gita ("gee-tah") that will follow you around, carrying 19 kilograms of tools, groceries, or whatever you want. There are many situations where such a cargo-carrying robot would be handy.