A Suitcase to Follow you at the Airport
My first thought about the Hop-Along Suitcase Bot was that it was extremely helpful. I was recently traveling through the airport thinking to myself how all of my bags that I was hauling along was about to break my shoulder. Reading about this, my first emotion was jelousy to whoever was lucky enough to be able to use this during my great adventure of pain. Although after I gave this invention some thought, I chuckled at the amount of nonsense this has. In my opinion, this new addition to the suitcase family has many flaws in the making. To start off, if you are not physically keeping track of your luggage then I would think this would make it even easier to lose. On a personal note, I would probably forget about it entirely. Other people could have the same issue. Also, if your suitcase is even just a couple of feet away from you, wouldn't anyone have thought of how this increases the possibility for your belongings to be stolen? If you are just
Caterpillar Tracks!
These are the invention which is used to follow their owner!
walking along in the airport, believing in the false advertisement that the suitcase will follow closely behind, anyone could come along take it. I don't see how increasing the crime rate is a good invention. Now I understand the whole concept of the suitcase locking when losing connection to your smartphone, which in return would cause it to start vibrating. I don't really think that a true criminal would mind, or even notice in the moment when stealing everything.
Also, there are times when I don't notice my phone vibrating so you could still be going along unknowlingly that your suitcase was just stolen. Another issue with this protection is that if you are having trouble with the connection between your phone and suitcase, it could be locking and going off constantly. This would be an extreme nuisance, with the already anoying procedure of navigating through the airport. The smartphone issue brings me to my final complaint. In the time of today, not everyone has a smartphone. This automatically takes away the possibilty for these people to use this new invention (at their own risk of getting their luggage stolen). I believe this is an unfair advantage especially because the majority of the people without smartphones are probably older people. This invention should be directed towards this category of people, not taken away and given to the younger or middle-aged group that are fit to carry their own possessions only because they are not up to date on the latest phone technology. All in all, I think this was a good attempt. I obviously see many issues that come with this new invention but I think this is because we are not in the right time period for it. By this I mean, I do think this could become very successful in the future. As we progress, so will all of our technology and given time everyone will most likely upgrade to a smartphone and the "normal" cell phones of today will be the phones of the past (much like chord phones today or typerwriters to our computers). Also as I stated, I would not consider this the most trusting time. Hearing stories from my grandparents and parents give me a sense of how trusting people were. Nowadays parents protect their children or belongings increasingly more for various reasons because of crime. With this on our minds and around us a suitcase that follows you without interaction would not be the best. Lastly, I am sure there are various bugs that come along with any new idea that would need to be fixed. As the advances in technology keep coming along, I'm sure this will also follow.