Since the early days of scooter-sharing, back in 2018, the industry has significantly matured to cater to the needs of cities worldwide. Gone are the days of launching in new territories with scooters fit for the consumer market: far superior technology now allows companies to build vehicles that are answering the needs of operators, riders and local authorities simultaneously.
Despite these advances, there are ongoing challenges with scooter sharing and, broadly speaking, with free-floating services. The most pressing issues are parking management and ensuring the safety of all road users. Technology, once again, is coming to the rescue. The ‘smartphone on wheels‘ is getting smarter, and computer vision solutions are being trialed and adopted by major operators.
The timing is perfect for companies developing such solutions: cities are more and more insistent on rider and pedestrian safety, forcing operators to innovate to stand a chance of winning tenders. Computer vision, which basically combines a camera with AI tools to analyze the images, aims to solve those problems and speed up the adoption of shared micromobility.
Tell me where you ride…
With accidents and anti-social behaviours making the headlines in the local news, regulation quickly grew stricter in many cities, especially around parking and sidewalk riding. Scooters were initially located using basic GPS devices, which soon revealed limitations in providing reliable information to both the user – who would look for a vehicle away from its real location – and the operator – who would struggle to monitor the scooter and forward the relevant information.
Virtual boundaries (geofencing), defining ‘no-go’, slow or parking zones, quickly became a best practice around the globe to prevent bad riding and parking behaviour… but are just one part of the solution. This is especially true for parking, the accuracy for which is now 10 centimetres, triggering the development of enhanced GPS positioning solutions for many operators convinced of the benefits it could provide to all parties (user, city and themselves).
Different technologies can be employed to improve the GPS signal and provide better accuracy. The most commonly used are: