The Star Wars licensed G1T4-M1N1 droid. Source: Piaggio Fast Forward
“May the Fourth be with you” is a well-known phrase to Star Wars fans. This May 4, Piaggio Fast Forward, or PFF, released a special edition of its gitamini robot, dubbed G1T4-M1N1. The cargo-carrying droid is the result of a collaboration between PFF’s designers and entertainment conglomerate The Walt Disney Co.
“We’ve had conversations with Disney over the years,” said Greg Lynn, CEO of Piaggio Fast Forward. “It was interested in our products, and within a week of our initial call, we scheduled a meeting with its licensing team out in Glendale, (Calif.) — it was by far the easiest introduction we’ve had.”
“We took gitaplus and gitamini to Disney’s campus, and a year’s collaboration went pretty quickly and smoothly,” he told The Robot Report. “We’ve done licensing before, like dropping inserts (into the robot’s cargo compartment) or branding for office furniture, a cooler company, or catering, but nothing of this depth.”
PFF has provided gita to hospitality companies and will exhibit kilo at Automate this week in Detroit.
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PFF aligns look and sound with Disney
Piaggio Fast Forward’s design and embedded software teams worked closely with Disney and Lucasfilm Ltd., according to Lynn. From the G1T4-M1N1’s decals to its user interface and smartphone app, the collaborators needed time to get approvals.
“We really wanted to make it intuitive to use the robots right out of the box,” Lynn recalled. “We wanted to get the lighting and the sounds right, and it was important that we identified which period (of the Star Wars saga) it came from.”
PFF narrowed its proposed robots to three and ultimately decided on a helpful astromech droid similar to R2-D2 or BB-8. This affected the choice of “language,” color scheme, and even materials, noted Lynn.
The company worked with Lucasfilm to customize a library of 22 sounds to signal events such as pairing and unpairing with a phone via Bluetooth, charging, booting up, and accelerating or decelerating. That “language” made G1T4-M1N1 much more interactive than a typical gitamini.
Disney Imagineers demonstrated how they give robots personality at last year’s Robotics Summit & Expo.
“We decided for this model to let the robot communicate with its leader when things were happening,” Lynn explained. “We already had odometry for the distance from the user, but when the robot turns a certain number of degrees, that triggers a sound. People who love Star Wars are comfortable with that level of interaction.”
Star Wars droid targets consumer market
Unlike some of the initial marketing for gita or the current enterprise subscription focus for kilo, PFF is aiming G1T4-M1N1 at consumers. It is available for $2,875, can carry payloads up to 20 lb. (9 kg), and can follow users on sidewalks or indoors.
“We’re always thinking about customers,” said Lynn. “There’s a Venn diagram of people ready to adopt a robot and Star Wars fans, and there’s a big overlap. We had a robot in the Times Square Disney Store, and we’ve had lots of positive comments from people who were there and on social media.”
In addition, customers are likely to engage with G1T4-M1N1 longer than with other robots, Lynn said. PFF is part of Piaggio Group, which is best known for its Vespa scooters.
G1T4-M1N1 does not have a microphone for more in-depth interaction, and Lynn acknowledged that it could have more customization options. However, favorable response to the initial release could lead to additional features in the future.
“We had our first customers and had a really great weekend,” said Lynn. “We met or exceeded our targets and found a lot of enthusiasm.”
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