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The company behind the iconic Vespa scooter is hoping that their new robot will do for pedestrians and workers what their two-wheeled vehicle did for postwar Italians who needed an easy way to navigate the country’s narrow streets.

Last night, in an exhibition space in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Piaggio Fast Forward, a startup under the larger Piaggio Group, demonstrated their prototype, named Gita, for the first time. Sporting two wheels that flank storage compartment capable of carrying 40 pounds, the two-and-a-half-foot tall roundish robot followed the company’s CEO Jeffrey Schnapp around the open space like a personal pack mule.

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The Gita robot homes in on the user's belt to follow them around.

“We’re not getting rid of the human,” said Greg Lynn, the company’s chief creative officer. “We think robots should work with humans and augment them.”

The inspiration behind Gita, he and Schnapp said, is to enable people to do more in their daily lives. That could mean anything from helping delivery drivers carry more packages while away from their trucks to assisting EMTs by transporting medical supplies from the ambulance to a patient.

Over the next six months, the company will be working with larger businesses to explore how Gita might fit into various workplaces. Six months later, they hope to have a model ready for the general public at a price of a few thousand dollars. The current prototype felt like it weighed a little shy of 100 pounds, but engineers said they hope to get it down to a still-heavy-but-more-reasonable 66 pounds.

The robot looks like a swollen Segway without the handlebars, a comparison that’s even more apt when you see it rove about balanced only on its two wheels. Like Segway, Piaggio Fast Forward also emphasized how this could change mobility in big cities.

For now, Gita relies on a human operator wearing a special belt full of electronics and transmitters to know where to go. Gita itself is studded with cameras and ultrasonic sensors—likely more than will be necessary in the final version, an engineer admitted—to help the robot see the world around it. Eventually, those sensors will help enable full autonomy—picture a fleet of them roving around warehouses in a convoy mode or delivering packages in crowded cities—but currently they help the device to detect obstacles like people and furniture. Maps of the places Gitas visit will be uploaded to the cloud, they said, where other Gitas can access them.

The company also debuted an add-on called Kilo, a sort of wheeled travois that would allow the robots to haul up to 200 pounds.

While the robot can’t climb stairs, Schnapp said it is capable of navigating buildings and spaces that are compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Gita prototype’s speed is limited to 11 mph, but Schnapp said their goal is to hit 22 mph, which would allow the robot to follow people walking, running, or cycling. At a pedestrian’s pace, the prototype can last for eight hours on a charge, they said.

Schnapp, Lynn, and their team have a busy 12 months ahead of the. But if they deliver, their little bot could find a home in a number of industries and, depending on the price, actual homes.