I had the misfortune to be on a golf course for a meeting the other week and noticed a plethora of golf trolley solutions : manual pull along trolleys for the fully able and non-lazy, the powered for those that just can't pull a trolley to the down right ridiculous radio-controlled trolley.

I propose a bluetooth enabled trolley. I suggest that the golfer has one bluetooth key ring in his/her pocket and another BT chip in the trolley itself. The link shows how you can calculate the distance between two BT units. The max range for a BT connection is 10 metres so I propose that your powered trolley uses its BT connection to set the default distance between golfer and itself as 5 metres.

Thus, as the golfer walks, the trolley attempts to maintain the 5metres (50% signal strength) by moving. The trolley will in effect, follow the golfer at a discreet distance.

What happens though when the golfer needs a club? Will the trolley "run" away? Certainly no. If the BT connection enables the trolley to calculate distance, it can also check if the golfer is moving towards the trolley. If it checks a diminishing distance, the trolley should stop moving. If it notes an increasing distance, the trolley should move.