You can be on Entrepreneur’s cover!

This Well-Known Luggage Maker Wants to Make Your Bag Smart Through a partnership with Samsung, Samsonite is developing a line of microchip-enabled bags that will track their own location and send updates to travelers via smartphone.

By Laura Entis

entrepreneur daily

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

mbocast | Foap.com

Checking in luggage for a flight is an exercise steeped in uncertainty. There are so many unknown variables: how long the check-in line will be, whether or not your bag is overweight, when it will show up on the carousel upon arrival, if it's even made it to your destination.

According to the Daily Mail, Samsung and Samsonite are working together to create a line of microchip-enabled smart luggage that removes some of the uncertainty from the process. Using GPS, the bags will track their own location and send updates to travelers via their smartphones. Practically, this means you'll known when a bag has been lost and also when it is about to be deposited onto the carousel (meaning you don't have to stand in the crush of people that always collects around the carousel chute).

As a defense against absent mindedness, the 'smart' bags will be able to alert travelers when they've wandered more than a few feet away.

No word yet on when the luggage will be available, but when it does launch, location-tracking will likely be just one of multiple 'smart' features.

Related: Baggage Blues No More: A Smart Suitcase Raises $1 Million on Indiegogo

"Smart luggage will be able to communicate with you but it needs to be able to do much more than just give its location," Samsonite's chief executive Ramesh Tainwala told the Mail. "We are working with Samsung to create something that is more than a gimmick."

Although it sounds more than a little gimmicky at this stage, Samsonite is apparently considering the idea of making engine equipped suitcases that can propel themselves around the airport. "This is a utopia we are working towards but we are not quite there yet," Tainwala told the Mail. "It's a blue sky idea where the bag will follow you six inches behind. It's a bit like a programmable remote control car."

There are bigger possible implications at play here, however. A bag equipped with microchips would be able to communicate its weight and destination to the airline, eliminating the need for it to be manually checked-in. There is already some interest from airlines. "Emirates and Lufthansa are working on this," Tainwala said. "There is no reason why luggage can't get connected. If you can communicate with your bag then why not the airlines?"

Related: Virgin Trains Is Giving Travelers a New Way to Track Their Missing Baggage

Laura Entis is a reporter for Fortune.com's Venture section.

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Editor's Pick

Business News

Mark Zuckerberg Told Meta Engineers to 'Figure Out' Snapchat's Privacy Protections: 'We Have No Analytics on Them'

Recently unsealed court documents detail "Project Ghostbusters," Meta's project to work around Snapchat's end-to-end encryption to intercept data.

Business News

Sam Bankman-Fried Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison for Multibillion-Dollar Crypto Fraud

Southern District of New York Judge Lewis Kaplan said that the loss amount to the victims of Bankman-Fried's crimes surpassed $550 million.

Growing a Business

The Brand Whiz Behind Sun Bum Is Famous For Making Boring Products Fun. Then, This One Stumped Him.

Everything Tom Rinks touched turned to gold until he took on a brand launch at Target that fizzled. Then, he found a creepy doll on Ebay, and he saw a way forward.

Thought Leaders

How To Improve Your Soft Skills and Emotional Intelligence in 7 Easy Steps

Using these simple but effective approaches will help a person in their business, life and relationships.