Combining human and computer vision

In 2017, Piaggio's Gita, a "a two-wheeled self-balancing machine, capable of carrying 40 pounds of cargo, that tags along with its user as they navigate sidewalks", pioneered a novel approach to autonomy. "Gita’s primary navigation system is a pair of stereoscopic cameras mounted on the front and back of the robot, with which it’s constantly performing visual SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping). But rather than doing person-tracking, it’s actually comparing its SLAM picture with the SLAM that the user is doing, thanks to a stereoscopic camera on the user’s belt."

This hybrid sensemaking points towards the ways that people and their robotic counterparts will share data to make sense of urban environments in real-time.