Search Results (5)

Scooter-sharing services, that is, short-term rental of electric scooters, have been gaining popularity among last-mile transport solutions in recent years, winning both their supporters and opponents. Recognizing the different approaches of societies to scooters in the world, the objective of this work was to determine the perception of scooter-sharing services in Poland, that is, the fifth largest European market in terms of micromobility. The study was based on survey data conducted using the CAWI method among the points of active users of scooter-sharing systems. The article presents the results regarding the perception of electric scooters in terms of safety, use, operation, education, and elements of communication behavior. The results indicate that the respondents perceive the Polish market of sharing electric scooters well. They believe that riding a scooter is safe (despite pointing out numerous technical faults that may indicate insufficient technical knowledge about what they can mean for users), and they are against mobility hubs and disrupting free systems. Interestingly, respondents emphasize the need to modernize the regulations, the need for penalties for damage to vehicles, and the need to reduce fees. The results provide valuable clues on how to manage the new electric mobility. They also indicate a different approach of Polish users to the issue of perceiving scooters in relation to other European societies (such as France or Denmark), which is a valuable clue for modeling transport behavior. Full article

In recent years, the electromobility market has been growing faster and faster. Electric scooters and scooter-sharing services offered for them, available in many cities around the world, have a special impact on its intensification. The constantly growing number of scooters and service operators brings many problems related to the proper functioning of services. In the literature, one can find attempts to solve the problems of scooters with references to the issues of transport, modeling and optimization, as well as legislative and social aspects. Technical issues, however, are overlooked. Among them, however, there is a problem with the appropriate selection of scooter models that can be used in scooter-sharing systems. Solving this type of problem may allow systems to be better matched to urban transport systems, increase the development of electromobility and encourage societies to transition from current means of transport (e.g., cars) to scooters. Paying attention to this research niche, the article is devoted to the selection of electric scooters for scooter sharing. This paper presents the author’s own research for the Polish market of scooter-sharing services. As part of the work, the author’s own list of factors from the point of view of which scooters can be assessed was developed; social research was conducted, considering the opinions of experts in the field of scooter sharing; and it was proposed to treat the problem of selecting scooters as a complex multicriteria decision-making problem. Moreover, the ELECTRE III method was used to solve this research problem in an innovative way. The research results indicate that when choosing a scooter, you should be guided primarily by such factors as the greatest range, equipping the vehicles with safety systems and the most powerful engine. Interestingly, the price of vehicles does not have to be the lowest possible. The article presents guidelines that support operators when upgrading or equipping systems with scooters and support individual users at the stage of deciding to buy a scooter. Full article

Accidents related to electric kick scooters, which are widespread globally, are increasing rapidly. However, most of the research on them concentrates on reporting accident status and injury patterns. Therefore, while it is necessary to analyze safety issues from the user’s perspective, interviewing or conducting a survey with those involved in an accident may not return enough data due to respondents’ memory loss. Therefore, this study aims to identify the risk factors in the context-of-use for electric kick scooters based on a topic modeling method. We collected data on risk episodes involving electric kick scooters experienced by users in their daily lives and applied text mining to analyze text responses describing the risk episodes systematically. A total of 423 risk episodes are collected from 21 electric kick scooter users in South Korea over two months from an online survey. The text responses describing risk episodes were classified into nine topics based on a latent Dirichlet allocation. From the result, four risk factors can be identified by analyzing the derived topics and the cause of the risk according to the context. Moreover, we suggested design improvement directions. This study can be helpful for designing safer electric kick scooters considering safety. Full article

In this paper, the authors present an evaluation of the electromagnetic fields generated by a static wireless charging system designed for an electric kick scooter on the human biological tissue. The guidelines on the exposure to the electromagnetic fields are previously specified. In this work, a model is designed under COMSOL multi-physics to study the effects of the magnetic field on two possible body parts of a person, which might be exposed to this field, namely the head and the hands is analysed. The magnetic flux density, the induced electrical field, the specific absorption rate, and the resulting increase of temperature of biological tissues are modelled and compared to the limits and guidelines prescribed in the regulation established to limit the exposure of people to electromagnetic fields. Furthermore, the used wireless charging system is modified to operate at higher frequencies to study its effect. The obtained results are below the guidelines and limits of exposure to the electromagnetic fields specified by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, European Commission, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and International Electrotechnical Commission. Full article

The aim of this article is to apply some design methodologies to define, as a first objective, an optimized technical specification and then, as a second objective, to manage the transition from conceptual design to construction project of an innovative means of urban transport, meeting the needs of ‘renewable energy’ requirements, which then decline into this new urban vehicle formed by a hoverboard and an electric scooter. The first part of the article is focused on the conceptual design of the means by using methodologies such as the Quality Function Deployment (QFD), applied in the first phase of the work to compare some of the most popular electric scooters on the market; we then used a typical method for product marketing, i.e., the decision-making process driven by the analysis of benchmarking, suitable for quantitatively organize competitive analysis and choosing innovation targets; finally, we implemented the top-flop analysis in order to better improve the benchmarking implementation, identifying the best product on the market, basing on the highest number of innovative requirements owned by it, as shown by Frizziero in 2018 and Meuli et al. in 1997. The second part of the article focuses on the project of the kick scooter through the use of a software for the FEA simulation and on the possible realization of the prototype through a suitable connecting component. Full article