Every day, Anicet Mbida makes us discover an innovation that could well change the way we consume.
This Tuesday, he looks back on the work of engineers at MIT in the United States, who have developed autonomous models of self-service bicycles, able to come to you on command, like a taxi or a VTC.
Something new in self-service bicycles. We work on autonomous models that we control like a VTC and which come our way by themselves.
Rather than doing a treasure hunt across the neighborhood to find a bike (and at the end find that it is flat), we order it with an application on our phone.
We are geolocated and the bike arrives on its own, like a taxi or a VTC.
It is a system developed by engineers at MIT in the United States.
They are currently testing it on their campus.
So it will surprise to meet ghost bikes moving by themselves in the streets.
But the advantage is that once the race is over, they will return to their loading point on their own.
We will no longer see bikes abandoned in the middle of sidewalks.
And they will be better distributed throughout the city.
But how do bicycles manage to stabilize themselves?
It's pretty smart, everything happens on the rear wheel.
When the bike is in autonomous mode, it splits in two to transform it into a tricycle.
And once you get on it, they come together.
We then drive a bicycle with conventional electric assistance.
Note that these are not fully autonomous bikes.
They are equipped with cameras and remotely controlled by an operator (again, because artificial intelligence is not sufficiently developed).
Finally, it is a system that also exists, since May, on scooters (we talked about this on this antenna).
It is in service near Atlanta in the United States.
We don't go looking for our scooter anymore.
She comes to meet us and leaves to stand alone to avoid the mess in the streets.
These services are expected to arrive in Europe by next year