E-scooters have become a more dominant mode of transport in recent years. However, the rise in their usage has been accompanied by an increase in injuries, affecting the trust and perceived safety of both users and non-users. Artificial intelligence (AI), as a cutting-edge and widely applied technology, has demonstrated potential to enhance transportation safety, particularly in driver assistance systems. The integration of AI into e-scooters presents a promising approach to addressing these safety concerns. This study aims to explore the factors influencing individuals willingness to use AI-assisted e-scooters. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire, capturing responses from 405 participants. The questionnaire gathered information on demographic characteristics, micromobility usage frequency, road users' perception of safety around e-scooters, perceptions of safety in AI-enabled technology, trust in AI-enabled e-scooters, and involvement in e-scooter crash incidents. To examine the impact of demographic factors on participants' preferences between AI-assisted and regular e-scooters, decision tree analysis is employed, indicating that ethnicity, income, and age signif
In order to mitigate economical, ecological, and societal challenges in electric scooter (e-scooter) sharing systems, we develop an autonomous e-scooter prototype. Our vision is to design a fully autonomous prototype that can find its way to the next parking spot, high-demand area, or charging station. In this work, we propose a path-following model predictive control solution to enable localization and navigation in an urban environment with a provided path to follow. We design a closed-loop architecture that solves the localization and path following problem while allowing the e-scooter to maintain its balance with a previously developed reaction wheel mechanism. Our model predictive control approach facilitates state and input constraints, e.g., adhering to the path width, while remaining executable on a Raspberry Pi 5. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach in a real-world experiment on our prototype.
The growing popularity of e-scooters and their rapid expansion across urban streets has attracted widespread attention. A major policy question is whether e-scooters substitute existing mobility options or fill the service gaps left by them. This study addresses this question by analyzing the spatiotemporal patterns of e-scooter service availability and use in Washington DC, focusing on their spatial relationships with public transit and bikesharing. Results from an analysis of three open big datasets suggest that e-scooters have both competing and complementary effects on transit and bikesharing services. The supply of e-scooters significantly overlaps with the service areas of transit and bikesharing, and we classify a majority of e-scooter trips as substitutes to transit and bikesharing uses. A travel-time-based analysis further reveals that when choosing e-scooters over transit, travelers pay a price premium and save some travel time. The price premium is greater during the COVID-19 pandemic but the associated travel-time savings are smaller. This implies that public health considerations rather than time-cost tradeoffs are the main driver for many to choose e-scooters over tra
Micro-mobility services (e.g., e-bikes, e-scooters) are increasingly popular among urban communities, being a flexible transport option that brings both opportunities and challenges. As a growing mode of transportation, insights gained from micro-mobility usage data are valuable in policy formulation and improving the quality of services. Existing research analyses patterns and features associated with usage distributions in different localities, and focuses on either temporal or spatial aspects. In this paper, we employ a combination of methods that analyse both spatial and temporal characteristics related to e-scooter trips in a more granular level, enabling observations at different time frames and local geographical zones that prior analysis wasn't able to do. The insights obtained from anonymised, restricted data on shared e-scooter rides show the applicability of the employed method on regulated, privacy preserving micro-mobility trip data. Our results showed population density is the topmost important feature, and it associates with e-scooter usage positively. Population owning motor vehicles is negatively associated with shared e-scooter trips, suggesting a reduction in e-s
The micromobility is shaping first- and last-mile travels in urban areas. Recently, shared dockless electric scooters (e-scooters) have emerged as a daily alternative to driving for short-distance commuters in large cities due to the affordability, easy accessibility via an app, and zero emissions. Meanwhile, e-scooters come with challenges in city management, such as traffic rules, public safety, parking regulations, and liability issues. In this paper, we collected and investigated 5.8 million scooter-tagged tweets and 144,197 images, generated by 2.7 million users from October 2018 to March 2020, to take a closer look at shared e-scooters via crowdsourcing data analytics. We profiled e-scooter usages from spatial-temporal perspectives, explored different business roles (i.e., riders, gig workers, and ridesharing companies), examined operation patterns (e.g., injury types, and parking behaviors), and conducted sentiment analysis. To our best knowledge, this paper is the first large-scale systematic study on shared e-scooters using big social data.
In the dense fabric of urban areas, electric scooters have rapidly become a preferred mode of transportation. As they cater to modern mobility demands, they present significant safety challenges, especially when interacting with pedestrians. In general, e-scooters are suggested to be ridden in bike lanes/sidewalks or share the road with cars at the maximum speed of about 15-20 mph, which is more flexible and much faster than pedestrians and bicyclists. Accurate prediction of pedestrian movement, coupled with assistant motion control of scooters, is essential in minimizing collision risks and seamlessly integrating scooters in areas dense with pedestrians. Addressing these safety concerns, our research introduces a novel e-Scooter collision avoidance system (eCAS) with a method for predicting pedestrian trajectories, employing an advanced LSTM network integrated with a state refinement module. This proactive model is designed to ensure unobstructed movement in areas with substantial pedestrian traffic without collisions. Results are validated on two public datasets, ETH and UCY, providing encouraging outcomes. Our model demonstrated proficiency in anticipating pedestrian paths and a
Many cities around the world have introduced dockless micromobility services in recent years and witnessed their rapid growth. Shared dockless e-scooters have the potential to benefit neighborhoods that lack access to station-based bikeshare services, but they may also exacerbate the existing spatial disparities. While some studies have examined the equity of station-based bikeshare systems, limited knowledge is available regarding dockless e-scooter services. This study uses Washington DC as a case study, a city with both dockless e-scooter and station-based bikeshare systems, to conduct equity analysis of the two types of micromobility options. We develop an analytical framework to examine how dockless e-scooter and station-based bikeshare differ on a set of equity-related outcomes (i.e., availability, accessibility, usage, and idle time) across neighborhoods of different socioeconomic categories. Results reveal that dockless e-scooter services increase accessibility to shared micromobility options for disadvantaged neighborhoods but also widen the access gap across neighborhoods. Compared to bikeshare, shared e-scooters have a higher level of spatial accessibility overall due to
Micromobility vehicles, such as e-scooters, Segways, skateboards, and unicycles, are increasingly adopted for short-distance travel due to their low weight and low emissions. Despite their growing popularity, we lack controlled, low-risk environments to study rider experiences and performance. While virtual reality (VR) simulators offer a promising approach by reducing safety risks and providing immersive experiences, micromobility simulators remain largely underexplored. We introduce MicroVRide, a modular 4-in-1 VR micromobility simulator that supports e-scooters, Segways, electric unicycles, and one-wheeled skateboards on a single platform. The simulator preserves vehicle-specific physical constraints and control metaphors, enabling the study of diverse riding behaviors with minimal hardware reconfiguration. We contribute the simulator design and report a preliminary within-subject study (N = 12) that demonstrates feasibility and reveals distinct experiential profiles across vehicles.
Micromobility is a growing mode of transportation, raising new challenges for traffic safety and planning due to increased interactions in areas where vulnerable road users (VRUs) share the infrastructure with micromobility, including parked micromobility vehicles (MMVs). Approaches to support traffic safety and planning increasingly rely on detecting road users in images -- a computer-vision task relying heavily on the quality of the images to train on. However, existing open image datasets for training such models lack focus and diversity in VRUs and MMVs, for instance, by categorizing both pedestrians and MMV riders as "person", or by not including new MMVs like e-scooters. Furthermore, datasets are often captured from a car perspective and lack data from areas where only VRUs travel (sidewalks, cycle paths). To help close this gap, we introduce the MicroVision dataset: an open image dataset and annotations for training and evaluating models for detecting the most common VRUs (pedestrians, cyclists, e-scooterists) and stationary MMVs (bicycles, e-scooters), from a VRU perspective. The dataset, recorded in Gothenburg (Sweden), consists of more than 8,000 anonymized, full-HD image
Electric scooters (e-scooters) have rapidly emerged as a popular mode of transportation in urban areas, yet they pose significant safety challenges. In the United States, the rise of e-scooters has been marked by a concerning increase in related injuries and fatalities. Recently, while deep-learning object detection holds paramount significance in autonomous vehicles to avoid potential collisions, its application in the context of e-scooters remains relatively unexplored. This paper addresses this gap by assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of cutting-edge object detectors designed for e-scooters. To achieve this, the first comprehensive benchmark involving 22 state-of-the-art YOLO object detectors, including five versions (YOLOv3, YOLOv5, YOLOv6, YOLOv7, and YOLOv8), has been established for real-time traffic object detection using a self-collected dataset featuring e-scooters. The detection accuracy, measured in terms of mAP@0.5, ranges from 27.4% (YOLOv7-E6E) to 86.8% (YOLOv5s). All YOLO models, particularly YOLOv3-tiny, have displayed promising potential for real-time object detection in the context of e-scooters. Both the traffic scene dataset (https://zenodo.org/records
Shared micromobility services such as e-scooters and bikes have become an integral part of urban transportation, yet their efficiency critically depends on effective vehicle rebalancing. Existing methods either optimize for average demand patterns or employ robust optimization and reinforcement learning to handle predefined uncertainties. However, these approaches overlook emergent events (e.g., demand surges, vehicle outages, regulatory interventions) or sacrifice performance in normal conditions. We introduce AMPLIFY, an LLM-augmented policy adaptation framework for shared micromobility rebalancing. The framework combines a baseline rebalancing module with an LLM-based adaptation module that adjusts strategies in real time under emergent scenarios. The adaptation module ingests system context, demand predictions, and baseline strategies, and refines adjustments through self-reflection. Evaluations on real-world e-scooter data from Chicago show that our approach improves demand satisfaction and system revenue compared to baseline policies, highlighting the potential of LLM-driven adaptation as a flexible solution for managing uncertainty in micromobility systems.
E-scooters are becoming a popular means of urban transportation. However, this increased popularity brings challenges, such as road accidents and conflicts when sharing space with traditional transport modes. An in-depth understanding of e-scooter rider behaviour is crucial for ensuring rider safety, guiding infrastructure planning, and enforcing traffic rules. This study investigated the rider behaviour through a naturalistic study with 23 participants equipped with a bike computer, eye-tracking glasses and cameras. They followed a pre-determined route, enabling multi-modal data collection. We analysed and compared gaze movements, speed, and video feeds across three transport infrastructure types: a pedestrian-shared path, a cycle lane and a roadway. Our findings reveal unique challenges e-scooter riders face, including difficulty keeping up with cyclists and motor vehicles due to speed limits on shared e-scooters, risks in signalling turns due to control lose, and limited acceptance in mixed-use spaces. The cycle lane showed the highest average speed, the least speed change points, and the least head movements, supporting its suitability as dedicated infrastructure for e-scooters
Routing algorithms for public transport, particularly the widely used RAPTOR and its variants, often face performance bottlenecks during the transfer relaxation phase, especially on dense transfer graphs, when supporting unlimited transfers. This inefficiency arises from iterating over many potential inter-stop connections (walks, bikes, e-scooters, etc.). To maintain acceptable performance, practitioners often limit transfer distances or exclude certain transfer options, which can reduce path optimality and restrict the multimodal options presented to travellers. This paper introduces Early Pruning, a low-overhead technique that accelerates routing algorithms without compromising optimality. By pre-sorting transfer connections by duration and applying a pruning rule within the transfer loop, the method discards longer transfers at a stop once they cannot yield an earlier arrival than the current best solution. Early Pruning can be integrated with minimal changes to existing codebases and requires only a one-time preprocessing step. The technique preserves Pareto-optimality in extended-criteria settings whenever the additional optimization criteria are monotonically non-decreasing
The increasing adoption of electric scooters (e-scooters) in urban areas has coincided with a rise in traffic accidents and injuries, largely due to their small wheels, lack of suspension, and sensitivity to uneven surfaces. While deep learning-based object detection has been widely used to improve automobile safety, its application for e-scooter obstacle detection remains unexplored. This study introduces a novel ground obstacle detection system for e-scooters, integrating an RGB camera, and a depth camera to enhance real-time road hazard detection. Additionally, the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) measures linear vertical acceleration to identify surface vibrations, guiding the selection of six obstacle categories: tree branches, manhole covers, potholes, pine cones, non-directional cracks, and truncated domes. All sensors, including the RGB camera, depth camera, and IMU, are integrated within the Intel RealSense Camera D435i. A deep learning model powered by YOLO detects road hazards and utilizes depth data to estimate obstacle proximity. Evaluated on the seven hours of naturalistic riding dataset, the system achieves a high mean average precision (mAP) of 0.827 and demonstrates
The increasing, high-risk interactions between vehicles and vulnerable micromobility users, such as e-scooter riders, challenge vehicular safety functions and Automated Driving (AD) techniques, often resulting in severe consequences due to the dynamic uncertainty of e-scooter motion. Despite advances in data-driven AD methods, traffic data addressing the e-scooter interaction problem, particularly for safety-critical moments, remains underdeveloped. This paper proposes a pipeline that utilizes collected on-road traffic data and creates configurable synthetic interactions for validating vehicle motion planning algorithms. A Social Force Model (SFM) is applied to offer more dynamic and potentially risky movements for the e-scooter, thereby testing the functionality and reliability of the vehicle collision avoidance systems. A case study based on a real-world interaction scenario was conducted to verify the practicality and effectiveness of the established simulator. Simulation experiments successfully demonstrate the capability of extending the target scenario to more critical interactions that may result in a potential collision.
Shared micro-mobility such as e-scooters has gained significant popularity in many cities. However, existing methods for detecting community structures in mobility networks often overlook potential overlaps between communities. In this study, we conceptualize shared micro-mobility in urban spaces as a process of information exchange, where locations are connected through e-scooters, facilitating the interaction and propagation of community affiliations. As a result, similar locations are assigned the same label. Based on this concept, we developed a Geospatial Interaction Propagation model (GIP) by designing a Speaker-Listener Label Propagation Algorithm (SLPA) that accounts for geographic distance decay, incorporating anomaly detection to ensure the derived community structures reflect meaningful spatial patterns. We applied this model to detect overlapping communities within the e-scooter system in Washington, D.C. The results demonstrate that our algorithm outperforms existing model of overlapping community detection in both efficiency and modularity. However, existing methods for detecting community structures in mobility networks often overlook potential overlaps between commu
Existing approaches to e-scooter mobility hub planning lack city-type-specific causal evidence. Demand models are typically correlational, built on proprietary trip data, and do not distinguish how driver profiles vary across urban typologies. This paper presents a three-phase agentic AI framework that constructs a Causal Template Library from public GBFS data across 29 German cities, encoding which environmental features causally drive hotspot demand for each combination of city type (large, university, industrial, hilly) and cluster type (core, peripheral). A large language model (LLM) orchestrated causal discovery pipeline adapts algorithm selection to local data conditions across 57 city-cluster units. The library reveals systematic variation. Core demand is driven by activity access and transit proximity, while peripheral demand responds to built form, with city-type-specific patterns supporting transferable siting templates. A planning tool built on the library scores candidate sites, calibrates infrastructure recommendations to local demographics, and generates practitioner-ready reports. In Heilbronn, Germany, two hub sites informed by the framework's causal evidence are cu
Do e-scooter speed governance policies yield behavioral safety gains beyond the mechanical cap they impose? A firmware ceiling mechanically prevents speeding, but whether the same riders also generate fewer harsh accelerations and harsh decelerations when the ungoverned mode is withdrawn remains open. We analyze 19.5 million GPS-instrumented trips from 52 South Korean cities (February to November 2023). Our two-stage predict-then-validate design targets two trip-level binary outcomes, any harsh-acceleration event and any harsh-deceleration event. In Phase~I, we predict each outcome's within-user reduction under an ungoverned-to-governed substitution, using a rider-heterogeneous random-parameters binary logit on the pre-ban period. In Phase~II, we validate these predictions using a difference-in-differences specification that exploits the operator's system-wide December~2023 removal of the ungoverned mode. The causal estimates confirm the Phase~I predictions in sign and order of magnitude on both outcomes, are Bonferroni-significant, and satisfy a 3-month pre-ban parallel-trends test. A within-user composition check finds no behavioral offsetting, indicating that firmware removal of
Despite progress in deep learning for shared micromobility demand prediction, the systematic design and statistical validation of temporal input structures remain underexplored. Temporal features are often selected heuristically, even though historical demand strongly affects model performance and generalizability. This paper introduces a reproducible data-processing pipeline and a statistically grounded method for designing temporal input structures for image-to-image demand prediction. Using large-scale e-scooter data from Austin, Texas, we build a grid-based spatiotemporal dataset by converting trip records into hourly pickup and dropoff demand images. The pipeline includes trip filtering, mapping Census Tracts to spatial locations, grid construction, demand aggregation, and creation of a global activity mask that limits evaluation to historically active areas. This representation supports consistent spatial learning while preserving demand patterns. We then introduce a combined correlation- and error-based procedure to identify informative historical inputs. Optimal temporal depth is selected through an ablation study using a baseline UNET model with paired non-parametric tests
The rapid adoption of micromobility solutions, particularly two-wheeled vehicles like e-scooters and e-bikes, has created an urgent need for reliable autonomous riding (AR) technologies. While autonomous driving (AD) systems have matured significantly, AR presents unique challenges due to the inherent instability of two-wheeled platforms, limited size, limited power, and unpredictable environments, which pose very serious concerns about road users' safety. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of AR systems by systematically examining their core components, perception, planning, and control, through the lens of AD technologies. We identify critical gaps in current AR research, including a lack of comprehensive perception systems for various AR tasks, limited industry and government support for such developments, and insufficient attention from the research community. The review analyses the gaps of AR from the perspective of AD to highlight promising research directions, such as multimodal sensor techniques for lightweight platforms and edge deep learning architectures. By synthesising insights from AD research with the specific requirements of AR, this review aims to accel