Exploring City-Level Behavior

What will happen when bikes are able to ride on their own? Will it make bike sharing even better? These are the questions we're diving into with a computer simulation.

The Power of Data and Computer Simulations

To understand how self-driving bikes could impact our cities, we looked at data from Boston's Bluebikes. We wanted to know how many self-driving bikes we'd need to serve the same number of people. Then, we used our computer model to see what would happen if there were more or fewer bikes, if they went faster, or if they had bigger batteries. Basically, we wanted to see how these self-driving bikes would work in the real world.

Revealing the Benefits

Our analysis revealed some exciting news! Self-driving bikes could serve the same number of people with way fewer bikes than a system like Bluebikes. Plus, we found out that we wouldn't need to spend as much time moving bikes around to make sure they're in the right place.

With self-driving bikes, we would need way fewer bikes than current systems

Insights for Everyone

This study isn't just for scientists—it's for everyone involved! Bike sharing companies can use our findings to make their systems better. Engineers can learn how to build the right autonomous bike. And city planners can see how these bikes might change our cities and what rules we might need to make them work.