Use of Mobile Sensing Data for Assessing Vibration Impact of E-Scooters with Different Wheel Sizes

Abstract

With the growing demand of shared electric scooters (e-scooters) for short-distance trips in urban areas, their safety issues have received significant attention from various stakeholders. In general, e-scooter riders encounter more vibrations compared with users of other transportation modes such as bicycles that typically have larger wheels and better suspension systems. Such riding experience may lead to discomfort, affect riders’ health, and increase riding risk. Intuitively, increasing e-scooters’ wheel sizes may provide safer and more comfortable riding experience. However, this assumption has not been well tested. The main objective of this paper is to curtail this gap by quantitatively assessing the impacts riders experienced, through the use mobile sensing data. Specifically, a mobile sensing platform was deployed on e-scooters with different wheel sizes to continuously measure encountered vibrations. Then, the instrumented e-scooters were ridden on routes with different pavement materials. Finally, the collected data were further processed and analyzed to evaluate various riding issues in each riding scenario. The comparative results suggest that e-scooters with larger wheels can efficiently alleviate vibrations during a ride compared with those with smaller wheels. To improve riding experience and safety, it is beneficial to use larger-wheel e-scooters, given other similar riding conditions.