Follow Me Wagon — Product Viability Report

Executive Summary

Recommendation: PROCEED to Stage 2 — with conditions. Commit approximately $20,000–$47,000 to build a single load-capable development prototype for the small-farm harvest assist beachhead.

Follow Me Wagon proves that GPS-based (plain GPS) follow behavior works on commodity hardware. The current v1 chassis (5 kg static maximum) is a behavior demonstrator, not a platform capable of carrying commercial payloads. The design can carry real payloads if it is further developed into a full product.

The recommended beachhead is small-farm harvest assist. Small-farm growers pay $30,000–$150,000+ for enterprise agricultural robots or carry bins by hand. Nothing purpose-built exists between zero and $30,000 for sub-100-acre operations. At $3,500 purchase price, approximately 1.5-season payback at $20/hr recovered labor.

Top three risks requiring resolution before commercial deployment:

R1 Safety gate — no obstacle detection. The prototype cannot yet sense and stop for obstacles. It is both a safety hazard and legal-liability exposure until ultrasonic sensors (such as the HC-SR04) are integrated and field-validated. Product-liability insurance must be in place before any on-farm use.
R2 Chassis cost compression is unproven. The entire financial model rests on building the load-bearing frame cheaply enough at volume. No manufacturer has yet provided a firm production quote. This is the single most important number to obtain before production spending.
R3 RTK (corrected GPS) correction source availability. Following the operator accurately requires a real-time correction signal. The most common North American source is being discontinued, and alternatives rely on cellular coverage that many rural farm fields lack. Coverage must be physically checked at target farms before hardware is purchased.

Original Intent & What Prototyping Discovered

The original concept was a personal general-purpose cargo wagon. Short-range methods were evaluated and ruled out: closed Ultra-Wideband (UWB) ecosystems from major phone makers, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) RSSI ranging (physics-limited in real environments), and custom UWB (high R&D cost). GPS (plain GPS) was the workable fallback. The phase-based time-locked-arc controller suppresses GPS (plain GPS) noise-induced over-rotation. This proves the behavior on a hobby platform but does not prove commercial utility or payload capacity.

Market Opportunity

Segment	Addressable Opportunity	Confidence	Entry Timing
Small-Farm Harvest Assist (Beachhead)	$75M–$400M rough upper bound	LOW	Stage 2
Elder / Mobility Assist	Sub-use within $3.4B narrow assistive robotics market	MEDIUM	Stage 3+
Golf Autonomous Caddy	~$320M (saturated with superior incumbents)	LOW	Future-state only

The data compelled redirection to small-farm harvest assist. The buyer’s decision is ROI-grounded. No direct competitor occupies the $2,500–$8,000 price tier. Enterprise competitors price at $30,000–$150,000+.

Beachhead Recommendation & The Redirection

The original intent was personal cargo. The v1 payload ceiling is below every identified use case, and the personal cargo segment already has an active incumbent (Piaggio Gita) with superior architecture. The data pointed to small-farm harvest assist — ROI-grounded buyers, a confirmed price gap, and no direct incumbent at the small-farm tier. The redirection is a strength of the process. Personal cargo is correctly sequenced as a Stage-3 expansion path.

Customer & Positioning

The target customer — “Rosa” — operates a small commercial vegetable farm (15–80 acres). She makes capital equipment decisions with direct accountability to harvest economics. At $3,500, payback is approximately 1.5 seasons at $20/hr labor recovery. Her Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) sweet spot is estimated at $2,500–$4,500. Positioning: purpose-built for harvest carry-assist, priced as recoverable capital equipment, sized for sub-100-acre economics.

Staged Financial Model

Stage 2 Development

$20K–$47K

One load-capable prototype

Total Capital to Revenue

$150K–$447K

Midpoint planning ~$300K

Target Retail

$3,500

Early adopter $4,200

At 1,000-unit scale with a purpose-built chassis, unit economics approach breakeven on direct cost of goods sold. The single largest lever is chassis cost compression.

The Engineering Gap to a Real Product

Platform Scale-Up (Required)

Stronger frame & drivetrain for 20–50 lb payloads over uneven terrain

Larger battery + power management system

RTK (corrected GPS) positioning for close, predictable following

Obstacle detection + automatic safety stop

Weatherproofing (IP54+) + load-rated payload mount

Positioning Upgrade Paths

RTK GPS (ZED-F9P module) — centimeter-level accuracy with correction source

Custom RF/Ultra-Wideband (UWB) — technically superior but high R&D cost (deferred)

Vision/LiDAR branch — solves positioning accuracy and safety together

The v1 hobby chassis cannot be modified or reinforced to serve commercial use cases. It must be replaced entirely.

Risk & Cybersecurity

Risk	Status	Mitigation
Obstacle Collision / Safety Gate	Critical	Integrate the HC-SR04 ultrasonic distance sensor (to detect obstacles ahead and automatically stop the motors) + hardware E-stop before any trials; obtain product liability insurance
Chassis Cost Does Not Compress	High	Hard RFQ from ≥2 manufacturers before Stage 3 capital commitment
RTK (corrected GPS) Correction Source Unavailable	High	Physically validate NTRIP (Networked Transport of RTCM via Internet Protocol — a service that provides real-time GPS correction data over cellular) coverage at actual target farm locations before hardware order
Grower Adoption Slower Than Projected	Significant	Minimum 3 conditional purchase commitments from Stage 2 field trials before Stage 3

Cybersecurity must be hardened before any deployment beyond a closed home network.

Competitive Reality

Piaggio Gita is the only shipping follow-me cargo product with meaningful presence. It uses vision-based person tracking (superior to GPS coordinate following) and carries 20–40 lb. The golf caddy market is saturated with technically superior incumbents. No direct competitor exists in the small-farm $2,500–$8,000 price tier.

Recommendation, Conditions & 90-Day Next Steps

Recommendation: PROCEED to Stage 2. Stage 3 production capital is not justified until five gate criteria are satisfied (prototype carries ≥20 lb on real terrain, RTK/corrected GPS accuracy validated in target fields, minimum three growers express conditional purchase intent, manufacturer RFQ for chassis cost, and scoped engineering estimate received).

Five concrete 90-day next steps:

1
File a provisional patent application before any public disclosure of Stage 2 RTK firmware or controller architecture.
2
Obtain product liability insurance before any farm demonstration.
3
Validate NTRIP (real-time GPS correction data service) cellular coverage at candidate farm locations before ordering Stage 2 hardware.
4
Conduct a minimum of 10 structured customer discovery interviews with small commercial vegetable growers.
5
Obtain at least one hard manufacturing RFQ on a load-rated UGV chassis before finalizing the Stage 2 budget.