Those who need assisted transport have few options for getting around city sidewalks beyond a wheelchair. Hitachi thinks its ROPITS (Robot for Personal Intelligent Transport System) could provide a slicker approach -- and make those of us on foot rather jealous, quite frankly. Steering the single-seater is just a matter of picking a destination on a smartphone or a tablet and letting the pathfinding system figure out the rest. The robot can even come to the owner, if that's too much of a trek. ROPITS won't be much of a risk to pedestrians at a 3.7MPH traveling speed, but it should be
