Toward the creation of a novel electric bike rental program to ease university congestion

Abstract

At many large universities, parking and moving about campus can be difficult, in part due to high student foot traffic and large distances between parking lots and university buildings. While the universities often encourage alternative means of commuting on campus (bikes, skateboards, etc.), these often see limited adoption and, in some highly-Trafficked areas, pose a safety risk. To combat these issues, we have begun creating a new, in house electric bike rental program, dubbed SharkCycles, with the goal of providing students with the ability to move around campus safely and quickly. However, there needs a way to manage the bikes to limit pedestrian collisions, keep track of the bikes on campus, and examine traffic patterns of students utilizing the bikes. In this paper, we will discuss a new system to manage electric bikes using geofencing that can be configured for and orchestrated to each bike. This method ensures reliability and safety by storing and processing location data with onboard embedded computers instead of external servers while still allowing for quick response to policy changes.