A Brief History
Around the year 1495, Italian polymath Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (1452–1519) designed and possibly constructed a humanoid automaton known as Leonardo’s robot, or Leonardo’s mechanical knight. During the 500 years that followed da Vinci’s efforts, many other inventors have also worked to create robots, with such notable examples as 1985’s R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy), a toy robot accessory for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). More recently, Travelmate Robotics, a company based in the U.S., has uniquely created the world’s first robot assistant and self moving suitcase. Their patented technology allows their robots to follow you around wherever you go, while avoiding and/or stopping at obstacles. They have created a unique ecosystem between smartphones and robots, because they believe that robots should be integrated into technology that we already use. And their patent covers all robots connected to smartphones that follow you, which presents a one of a kind investment opportunity. Travelmate Robotics has already raised lots of funds through crowdfunding, which is how they were able to develop their robots and get them into the mass manufacturing stage. Now, they are doing an equity campaign where anyone around the world can invest into their company and get equity in return.
Digging Deeper
Travelmate as a robot assistant is bringing consumer robots into the mainstream and out of the world of science fiction. They are robots with thousands of features with future applications in the medical fields, sports industries and cargo transportation industries. It is basically like having a robot butler with you, and you can get one at an affordable price point. In fact, Travelmate Robots are special in that they are priced for consumers, and their company believes that this is a key point that will allow consumer robots to be adopted into people’s everyday lifestyles.
A cool feature that they are working to put in a future version of their robots is a holographic display. You read that right! Now, you’ll be able to get Princess Leia to say, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope” in real life… The team behind Travelmate says that this holographic display will have more practical uses as well. Namely, holographic teleconferencing will allow you to bring a whole new dimension to video calling. We are told that a holographic virtual assistant will also make its way into the robot. As a precursor to this functionality, they are already going to be adding Alexa into the current Travelmate Robots.
Travelmate Robots are a wonderful investment opportunity and since they are doing this through an equity campaign, anyone can invest. Question for students (and subscribers): Have you ever owned or would you like to own a robot? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
R.O.B. displayed at Nintendo New York as part of the NES. Photograph by Matt Grommes (MattGrommes).
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Historical Evidence
We recommend that you check out the Wefunder page at https://wefunder.com/travelmate.robotics for more information about Travelmate Robots.
For more information about the history of robots, please see…
Russell, Ben. Robots: The 500-year Quest to Make Machines Human. Scala Arts Publishers Inc., 2017.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Erik Möller of a model of a robot based on drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, has been released into the public domain worldwide by the copyright holder of this work.
