Is it a piece of luggage or a robot? Actually, a bit of both. The Italian company Piaggio is testing a cargo robot in U.S. cities like Boston and New York. Named Gita, it carries up to 40 pounds, can travel 22 miles per hour, and has an eight-hour battery life. It can be programmed to follow its owner—someone lugging furniture home, say, or a delivery person ferrying a huge food order. But the company claims Gita will eventually operate solo. Using cameras, maps, and sensors, it’ll roll down the sidewalk and deliver packages much more cheaply than people can. A major challenge, however, is that sidewalks in big cities, like Chicago and Tokyo, are crowded, so how will robots get around by themselves? Matt Delaney, an engineer who’s worked on self-driving cars, says robots will need to learn pedestrian behavior. “If you monitor people over many long repetitions in testing,” Delaney told The Economist, “a robot can learn the best routes.”