Canadian startup Gluxkind’s co-founder couple Kevin Huang and Anne Hunger walk with their 'Ella' hands-free stroller near the strip in Las Vegas on Jan. 4.OMAR YOUNIS/Reuters
As Road Sage, I’ve written about automobiles and driving. I’ve written about flying cars, electric bicycles, trucks, ATVs, skidoos, and self-driving vehicles. I’ve written about most things that roll or skid on two, three or four wheels at one time or another. I have never, however, written about strollers. Thanks to the folks at Vancouver-based startup Glüxkind Technologies, that is about to change.
Glüxkind has invented what the media are calling a “self-driving stroller.”
The baby technology startup, formed in 2020 by Anne Hunger and Kevin Huang, calls it “Ella” – an AI-powered smart stroller with hands-free navigation. Ella comes with a dual motor system for climbing hills, a rock-my-baby mode, an Intelligent Adaptive Braking System and automatic parking. Ella’s most significant feature, the one that recently earned the stroller an Honoree Award at the Consumer Electrics Show in Las Vegas, is its AI.
Ella has a 360-degree safety bubble made up of sensors. This, according to Glüxkind, “gives you an extra set of eyes. She monitors the surroundings and alerts you of potential dangers like cars, bikes, and scooters.” The stroller’s most flashy feature is its “hands-free mode,” which Glüxkind explains as follows: “When your child is not in the stroller and the stroller is unoccupied, Ella gives you the freedom to do what you need to do while she strolls on the sidewalk with you, at your pace.” If the child is in the stroller, hands-free mode will not work.
Price tag? A little under $5,000. Glüxkind (inspired by German for “lucky child”) is taking deposits for April orders.
The appearance of an AI-powered self-driving stroller raises a multitude of questions.
Is Ella the best name for an AI-powered stroller that offers a hands-free mode?
No. The name Ella means “fairy maiden” in English, “goddess” in Hebrew and “torch” in Ancient Greek. “MT – the Babyless Stroller” would be a more appropriate name.
I’m not a child care expert and can only speak from personal experience, but I’ve raised three children, and I can attest without equivocation that if any of them had figured out that they could be carried by mom or dad while their stroller magically rolled along without them, their bottoms would never have touched the seats. A self-driving stroller serves up the toddler trifecta. It combines snuggling with imposing your will on your parents with watching a funny machine perform a trick. Prediction: Parents of the future will have highly developed upper body muscles. Congratulations, chiropractors and physiotherapists, you may have many millions of new customers coming your way.
Will some gearhead techie try to override the system so hands-free mode works with an object (like a dog) in it?
Almost certainly. Hopefully they fail.
How soon before someone is arrested for DUI driving the world’s first self-driving stroller?
Not long after they figure out how to override the system. Never underestimate the human capacity to a) consume alcohol and b) misuse technology. It is one of our species-defining characteristics. If it can be driven, someone has tinkered with it and drove it drunk. Australian Chris Petrie was charged with driving a motorized cooler while impaired in 2011. The cooler could hold up to 48 cans of beer and Petrie was three times over the legal limit. He was fined. “It’s an unfortunate situation,” the magistrate said when delivering his verdict. “If he’d been drunk on a horse, he’d have been okay.”
In 2009, an Ohio man was hospitalized for minor injuries and was arrested after he drank 15 beers and crashed a motorized bar stool which he had fashioned out of an old lawn mower. “I wrecked my bar stool,” Wygle told the police when they arrived at the scene. Wygle said he got drunk after the crash, not before it. He received a year’s suspension, was sentenced to 60 days in jail (57 suspended) and fined US$375.
Given this propensity, the odds of someone getting lit up and crashing Glüxkind’s smart stroller are pretty good. My money is on fall 2023, around Thanksgiving.
Power couple: Navigating Vegas with a hands-free stroller.OMAR YOUNIS/Reuters
What about dogs and pets?
I have no evidence or proof, but I would be stunned if someone has not already photographed a dog sitting in Glüxkind’s self-driving stroller. Failing that, it will happen immediately after the first Ella is sold.
Have parents always been into the most cutting-edge technology when it comes to strollers?
Why yes. The first stroller was invented in 1733 because the Duke of Devonshire wanted to one-up his fellow nobles. He had Royal Garden architect William Kent create a “baby carriage.” This shell-shaped basket was perched on two wheels and could be pulled by a dog, small pony or a goat. Seconds after it hit the gravel, Lady Wishfort, Lady Fidget, Mrs. Loveit and Mrs. Foresight wanted one too. By spring 1734, Covent Garden was clogged with them.
Perambulators (prams) evolved to satisfy parents’ eternal thirst for the best stroller to hold the best children in history. In 1895, the Tacoma Daily Ledger boasted that, “We propose that the future wheels of Baby Carriages shall have speedy outward movement filling up the want places in the land of Babydom.” In the Ottawa Citizen in 1898, baby carriage maker B. G. & Co. declared their “Convenient, Health-giving, Mother-resting articles” were a “relief to weary mothers” and a “blessing to sickly babies.”
From then on, it’s been constant innovation. Stroller use boomed after the First World War. In 1965, the umbrella stroller was invented. And in 1984 came the jogging stroller.
Is Ella the smart stroller actually the first motorized stroller?
No. W. H. Dunkley was a baby carriage magnate and head of Dunkley’s Ltd in London. Dunkley, who after the First World War only hired one-armed veterans, was developing a “pramotor.” In 1923, he unveiled a prototype (like our modern electric unicycles) at Atlantic City. The Atlantic City Dispatch wrote, “The nurse finds comfortable footing on either side of a low wheel, which is connected with the perambulator. This wheel has a gasoline tank and motor, so both nurse and baby roll along smoothly without effort by nurse except to repair punctures and keep the tank filled.” Sadly, Dunkley passed away in 1928 at the age of 68 and the pramotor went nowhere.
By 1935, Associated Press reported that souped-up strollers were popular in London. “Motorized prams or baby carriages semi-streamlined, with nursemaid walking with her hand on throttle instead of pushing as of old have become the rage in London’s fashionable West End. Colours are yielding to modern influences and babies of the rich ride in green, tan or yellow vehicles with the nurse, in some cases, attired to match. One London manufacturer has reportedly built a de luxe pram, costing $350 for a Hollywood film star’s baby.” Like the pramotor, these didn’t quite take off.
Inventors have been playing with the idea ever since with mixed results. In 2021, the world welcomed the e-Priam smart stroller, but Glüxkind’s Ella is the first self-driving smart stroller to hit the streets.
Will Glüxkind’s self-driving stroller sell?
Yes. Faster than hotcakes at the World International Hotcake Eating Contest. Glüxkind promises that “Ella’s advanced parent assist technology empowers parents to be present and focus on their kids without compromise or distracting multi-tasking.” What bleary-eyed mom or dad wouldn’t want that no matter what the price?
What’s next for AI-powered baby technology?
If Glüxkind could invent a self-changing diaper, I think we’d be set.