Times of India—Let’s face it – jogging is one of the best forms of exercise, but sometimes it can get incredibly boring. Jogging is certainly an activity that’s better with a partner, but not all of us have the luxury of a jogging buddy who can join us at a moment’s notice. So, a group of researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia have designed a robot to fill that void.

Yes, it’s called the “Joggobot” and it is programmed to stay ahead of the jogger to encourage him or her to keep going at it. Although, calling it a robotic jogging buddy is a bit disingenuous. It is actually a flying robot that is just designed to move alongside you. Obviously keeping a robotic creature to be moving its joints at a constant and frequent pace would be impractical.

So here’s how it works – users customize the robot with a smartphone app to tell it how high off the ground it wants it to be, and how fast it wants to go. The robot has a camera, and the jogger has to wear a special t-shirt that can be identified by the camera. Then, the robo companion can continue to keep an eye on the jogger’s progress. It’s not the most life-changing robot we’ve seen, but anything that expands robotics to applications beyond very high-end governmental and industrial purposes is cool to us.