Robot Suitcase: From Steamer Trunks to ABB

A robot suitcase is luggage that moves, steers or guides on its own: a bag that follows its owner through an airport, or one that leads a blind traveller through a building. This post traces how we got there, from wooden trunks carried by porters to Bernard Sadow's wheeled suitcase of 1970, Robert Plath's Rollaboard of 1987 and the battery packed smart luggage of the 2010s. It then looks at the AI Suitcase now on trial in Tokyo, the open problems with luggage that drives itself, and where ABB robots and mobile robots fit in.

Travellers pull wheeled suitcases along the platform of the Malaga Airport train station, 2014. Photo: Marek Ślusarczyk (Tupungato) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

How luggage went from porters to wheels

Before the suitcase there was the trunk. The word luggage comes from the verb lug, and the Oxford English Dictionary recorded it in 1596. Most luggage was made of wood and leather with an iron base, waterproofed with canvas or tree sap, and servants or porters carried it. European elites on the Grand Tour of the 18th century travelled with trunks that no one expected them to lift themselves. The first suitcases appeared in the late 19th century, when railways made mass tourism possible. They were built to hold dress suits, which is where the name comes from, and they were made of heavy leather or steel until lighter materials arrived from the 1930s.

An 1880 Louis Vuitton trunk from the wedding trousseau of Helen Cowles of Cleveland. Photo: Tim Evanson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

For decades the obvious fix, wheels, was ignored. The American entrepreneur Bernard Sadow pitched a wheeled suitcase to department stores, and Macy's began selling it in 1970; his patent was granted in 1972. The flat, wobbly design was soon overtaken. In 1987 Robert Plath, a Northwest Airlines 747 pilot, built the first Rollaboard in his garage: an upright case with two wheels and a telescoping handle. That shape became the standard carry-on that fills airport corridors today.

The four swivel wheels of an American Tourister suitcase. Photo: ArtSkillCraft / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The next step added electronics. In the 2010s smart suitcases arrived with GPS tracking, phone charging, built-in scales and remote locks. Bluesmart launched its Bluesmart One carry-on on Indiegogo in 2014 and raised US$2.2 million. Then lithium-ion batteries in some smart bags caught fire in cargo holds. Large US airlines banned checked smart luggage with batteries that could not be removed in late 2017 and early 2018, and Bluesmart announced in May 2018 that it was shutting down. Electric ride-on suitcases such as Airwheel's SE3 kept the motor but left steering to the rider.

An Airwheel SE3 electric suitcase that the owner sits on and rides, 2018. Photo: Airwheelrobot / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The robot suitcase today: following and guiding

The most advanced robot suitcase right now is built to guide blind people. On 28 September 2026 a suitcase-shaped AI robot that guides visually impaired people was demonstrated at the Toranomon Hills complex in Tokyo, The Japan Times reported. The trial runs through October, with one course that guides people with impaired vision through indoor and outdoor areas and another that any visitor can try. The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, Miraikan, leads development and wants to offer the robot as a rental service one day.

A visitor tries the AI Suitcase guide robot during a demonstration at Expo 2025 in Osaka. Photo: 妖精書士 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

The idea comes from Chieko Asakawa, a blind computer scientist who spent decades at IBM Research and now directs Miraikan. According to Miraikan, the AI Suitcase looks like an ordinary suitcase. A LiDAR sensor measures walls and obstacles, depth cameras and image recognition pick out pedestrians, and a GPU computer plans a safe route. Users set a destination in a smartphone app, hold a button on the handle to start, and feel small vibrating plates on the handle that signal turns. The outdoor model adds a satellite antenna for positioning.

Miraikan, the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo, which leads work on the AI Suitcase. Photo: Kestrel / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Follow-me suitcases use the same toolbox in a simpler form, with cameras or sensors that track the owner and keep a set distance. ABB does not make suitcases, but its Flexley Mover autonomous mobile robots solve a similar problem in factories: the P604 finds its way with 3D Visual SLAM, building a map from cameras instead of following tape on the floor. Anyone who wants to understand how a robot plans paths around people can start with simulation, for example in RobotStudio, or read our post on follow-me shopping carts.

ABB's Flexley Mover P604 moves loads around a plant without fixed tracks. Photo: ABB

What comes next for the robot suitcase

For travellers, the near future is likely to look like the Tokyo trial: robot suitcases offered for rent in a museum, an airport or a shopping centre that has been mapped in advance, rather than bought for every trip. Miraikan already uses the AI Suitcase for guided walks through its own permanent exhibitions. Guiding blind and partially sighted people is the use with the clearest value, because a suitcase that knows the building can replace a long wait for staff help. Personal follow-me suitcases for everyday travellers are still a niche, and many people seem happy to pull a Rollaboard.

A porter pushes a luggage cart along a railway platform, 2016. Photo: John Bastoen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Batteries are the first problem: they must meet airline rules, which is why so many smart bags now have removable packs. A suitcase that drives itself through a crowd has to stop reliably for a child or a wheelchair, and it has to cope with kerbs and gravel paths that a mapped indoor hall does not have. Cost is high, since LiDAR, depth cameras and a GPU add up to far more than a polycarbonate shell. Staff at airports and stations would also need training before they allow robots on the concourse.

Lead through teaching: moving an ABB GoFa arm by hand. Photo: ABB

ABB robots fit more easily on the factory side. Suitcase shells, wheels and handles are moulded, trimmed and assembled in large numbers, the kind of work that robot arms do in many plastics plants. A collaborative robot such as ABB's GoFa CRB 15000 could tend moulding or test machines next to people, for example pulling a handle thousands of times in a durability test. We found no such project, so treat it as a possibility. For more examples of real ABB installations, see these ABB robot use cases.

An ABB GoFa cobot loading parts into a machine at a small factory. Photo: ABB

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