UCLA architecture professor Greg Lynn, renown for his visionary designs, is one of the principals behind a new knee-high robot that is being launched this month by Piaggio Fast Forward, a Boston-based offshoot of the makers of Vespa. Lynn is the chief creative officer at the new company that is introducing Gita, a bot shaped like a fat tire, capable of transporting 40 pounds of goods in its cargo space.
With the ability to operate autonomously, Gita can follow a human being, like a delivery worker, rolling down crowded sidewalks, through doorways and around corners (but not up or down stairs). And it can find its way back to the starting point by itself or operate as a convoy of bots, each wirelessly sharing the same map of a specific route.
In 2005, Forbes magazine named Lynn one of the 10 most influential living architects, and in 1999, Time magazine ranked him among the 100 most innovative people in the world for the 21st century. He was named a 2010 Fellow of United States Artists. His work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal.
Read more about Gita here.
