Micromobility provider, TIER has demonstrated its pavement and tandem riding detection technology on its e-scooters in London.
These new AI capabilities were trialled on TIER e-scooters equipped with its ‘Parrot’ e-scooter IoT module, which can recognise “anti-social riding behaviours” without relying on complex cameras or computer vision systems.
Instead, TIER’s newly-developed pavement and tandem riding detection system has been designed to recognise how and where a TIER e-scooter is being ridden based on data from onboard sensors, which is then analysed by AI.
Nuno Simaria, CTO, TIER, said:While micromobility is still a relatively new addition to our streets, the technology we are developing is continuing to evolve at a rapid pace - as the capabilities of our new Parrot computing module shows. The project has challenged the team, but we are now able to create our own hardware, and from that base develop complex software and AI. With pavement and tandem riding detection we are able to provide a technological solution to anti-social riding, without needing to resort to an expensive and fragile computer vision based system.
During the recent demonstrations of this technology, e-scooter users who rode on the pavement received an automated warning after their ride, along with a reminder that they would be banned from using the service after their third offence.
A video of the demonstrations can be viewed here.
In addition to mitigating such unwanted riding behaviours, Parrot has also enabled TIER to increase the useable life of its UK e-scooter fleet by an additional three to five years.
Lawrence Leuschner, Co-founder and CEO, TIER, said:TIER was founded to offer people a sustainable travel alternative to driving in towns and cities. Anything we can do to increase the working life of our vehicles further reduces the carbon cost of making the vehicle in the first place, improving the overall sustainability of our service. To be able to do that while also creating a platform for us to make our service better for the user, and safer for the public is a rare case of an innovation with no downsides.
TIER now intends to fit the Parrot module to its entire UK fleet of e-scooters later this year.
