This is such an important research pilot project for TIER in Ireland and we are excited to have launched this trial across the five campuses of Dublin City University. It is an exciting opportunity for detailed research on smart city applications of e-scooters as well as modal shift, as we partner with Luna and Insight to help the University to reduce its carbon footprint and offer a more sustainable, safer first and last mile public transport solution. We hope to apply all project learnings to future TIER operations in Ireland.
Zipp is delighted to be partnering with Luna, another rapidly emerging Irish micromobility success story, to make our fleet the most technologically advanced one on the streets of the UK, and in the near future Ireland.
Voi is developing scooters that can ‘see’ what’s around them and therefore irrefutably ‘know’ what they need to do in order to be safe, whereas other scooters are trying to ‘feel’ what’s around them and use that to ‘guess’ what they should do next.
This is something that Voi wants to address with its Luna partnership, using computer vision techniques to enable real-time surface detection and open the door to more useful tools to keep scooters away from places they’re not supposed to be. This is where its edge AI truly shows its worth, as it negates the need for huge bandwidth and compute capabilities: It can control and govern the scooter in real time.
This state of the art technology will support the current trial in Northampton by allowing us to better understand rider and pedestrian behaviour and therefore, integrate e-scooters into our local transport system in a more effective and beneficial way.
Irish start-up Luna is developing GPS signal processing technologies to deliver centimetre-level precision and support the operational needs of micromobility companies (Taylor, 2019). Testing should reveal if the solution works in urban canyons and when the vehicle is in motion. Computer vision may be used to detect sidewalk riding on shared micro-vehicles. Companies are also working on solutions to detect sidewalk riding using video cameras (Silicon Canals, 2019). In the longer term, vehicles may be able to detect sidewalks and pedestrians and limit vehicle speed accordingly.
“Safe Micromobility” report (Feb 2020) – https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/docs/safe-micromobility_1.pdf (P. 60)
Luna’s trial with an international player like Blue Duck, is a great example of the calibre of groundbreaking mobility solutions that are being rolled out in Dublin.
We’re also looking forward to see how the data gleaned from the pilot cloud potentially enable informed conversations around micromobility and how it could be integrated into the city’s transport system in due course.