Robotic Stroller: From Kent's Pram to ABB Safety

A robotic stroller pushes itself up hills, brakes on the way down and stops the moment a parent lets go of the handle. It sounds like a trade show gadget, and partly it is, but it builds on almost three centuries of pram design. This post follows the baby carriage from a garden toy built for an English duke, through the folding buggy of the 1960s, to today's motor-assisted and self-driving strollers such as Glüxkind's Ella. It also looks at what ABB has learned about robots moving next to people, from SafeMove to mobile robots, as context for where these strollers may go. ABB does not make strollers.

A woman pushes a stroller along a sidewalk in Plymouth, Michigan. Photo: MsReadIt / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How prams went from a duke's garden to the folding buggy

The first known baby carriage was built for a rich family. In 1733 the Duke of Devonshire asked the architect and garden designer William Kent to make something that would carry his children. Kent built a shell-shaped basket on wheels that the children could sit in, richly decorated and meant to be pulled by a goat or a small pony. It belonged to an estate garden and had little to do with daily parenting. Over the next century carriages became smaller and were pushed by hand, and the parent, or more often a nanny, did all the pushing and all the braking.

A child's carriage from about 1840 to 1850, built with wooden spoked wheels. Photo: Antieke kinderwagen / Wikimedia Commons (FAL)

In the 19th century the pram became a product. Benjamin Potter Crandall sold baby carriages in the United States in the 1830s, often described as the first made there, and Jesse Armour Crandall later patented improvements that included brakes and folding. In 1889 William H. Richardson, an African American inventor, patented a reversible carriage whose bassinet could face out or towards the parent. In England, Silver Cross started building coach prams in Leeds in 1877. By the 1920s prams had larger wheels, brakes, deeper bodies and lower, sturdier frames, but a coach pram was still a heavy thing to push and to carry.

A wicker pram on display at the Museum der Arbeit in Hamburg. Photo: Andy Mabbett / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The big change in weight came from an engineer. In 1965 Owen Maclaren, an aeronautical engineer, listened to his daughter complain about travelling from England to America with a heavy pram. He used what he knew about aircraft to design a stroller with an aluminium frame that folded like an umbrella, and he founded the Maclaren company to make it. The umbrella stroller made baby transport light and portable. It did nothing to help on steep streets, though. For decades the only motor on a stroller was the parent pushing it.

A new type of pram in a Swedish suburb in 1956, with wide side handles so it could be carried up stairs. Photo: Savoy Atelje AB via IMS Vintage Photos / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Motors, sensors and the self-driving stroller

Motors arrived in the late 2010s. Cybex announced its e-Priam for July 2019, an electric version of its Priam pushchair with a battery on the rear axle. Sensors in the handlebar detect when the parent is struggling uphill and switch on Smart Uphill Assist, while Smart Downhill Assist adds braking force on slopes. If the parent lets go, the stroller slows and stops. Most electric strollers still work this way: the parent keeps a hand on the bar and the motor helps. A University of Cincinnati article in September 2026 noted that most of these models cost more than $2,000.

Rows of parked strollers at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida, May 2023. Photo: Benoit Prieur / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Glüxkind, a Vancouver startup founded in 2020 by Kevin Huang and Anne Hunger, went a step beyond push assist. Its Ella stroller debuted at CES 2023, was named a CES Innovation Awards honouree and collected nearly $10 million in pre-orders. A BCBusiness profile on 23 September 2026 describes dual motors for hills, adaptive braking that stops the stroller if the caregiver lets go of the handle, a hands-free follow mode that uses cameras and sensors, a rocking mode for sleeping babies and over-the-air software updates. The company says it has shipped to customers in eight countries since 2023 and does final assembly in Vancouver, and it now sells a cheaper model, Rosa.

A Bugaboo Cameleon3 Plus stroller with a phone holder on its handlebar, on sale in a shop in Stadskanaal, 2019. Photo: Donald Trung Quoc Don / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

A robotic stroller has to notice people and stop safely near them, which is a problem ABB works on every day in factories. ABB's SafeMove software supervises a robot's speed, its working zones and standstill, so an arm slows or stops when a person comes close. GoFa cobots stop when they sense contact. ABB's Flexley Mover P604 mobile robot finds its way with 3D Visual SLAM, building a map from cameras instead of following floor tape, much like the follow mode in follow-me shopping carts. ABB has put none of this into a stroller, though the engineering problems overlap.

The ABB Flexley Mover P604, which navigates with 3D Visual SLAM. Photo: ABB

Where self-driving strollers go next

For families, the next few years will probably bring better assistance, with the parent still in charge. Kara Ayers, a University of Cincinnati disability researcher who parents with a disability, told Forbes, as the university reported, that she sees potential based on her experience of pushing a regular stroller from a manual wheelchair, which was easy at the mall but hard on slopes and bumpy ground. Push assist, automatic braking and follow modes could matter most to parents with limited mobility and to older grandparents, a group also served by autonomous wheelchairs. Ayers also said parents want tools that look like family gear, not medical devices.

ABB's GoFa cobot is guided by hand and stops when it senses contact. Photo: ABB

Safety is harder to settle. A stroller carries a baby, and it moves on pavements, across kerbs and through crossings with cars, cyclists and dogs. Industrial robots meet this problem with tested safety functions and risk assessment for every cell, and engineers often check zones and speeds in software before a robot moves, as in zone visualization in RobotStudio. Self-driving functions are new to strollers, so for now each maker sets its own rules, such as braking as soon as nobody holds the handle.

Mothers push strollers along the edge of busy Route 60, June 1973. Photo: Harry Schaefer / U.S. National Archives via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Cost and trust are the other limits. With most models above $2,000, electric strollers are still a luxury, they need charging, and parents will have to trust software updates on something that carries their baby. Cameras, motors and safety logic of the kind used in mobile robots and cobots are made in growing numbers, and that could bring stroller prices down over time. A stroller that follows a parent through a park, climbs a hill unaided and brakes on its own is already for sale, and what it still needs is a lower price and a longer safety record.

ABB's mobile YuMi concept, a dual arm robot on a wheeled base, in a hospital lab corridor. Photo: ABB

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