Lime, Scoot and Spin are now unveiling their new technology aimed at keeping the scooters off the sidewalks. The systems allow the scooters to buzz along in the green lane, but slow to 5 miles per hour if they cross onto the sidewalk.
Lime and Scoot demonstrated a highly accurate GPS system. Scoot says its system is accurate to within about 4 inches. "What that means is when you ride the scooter up onto the sidewalk it detects that change using GPS, and then it slows down and stops," said Jonathan Grubb from Scoot.
Spin is taking another approach, using a camera capable of telling the difference between the sidewalk and the road, a system the company says it about 90% accurate. "So a camera-based system using computer vision and AI is going to better learn the algorithm of what infrastructure looks like in San Francisco and is going to be able to adapt and scale city wide," said Phuong Bui from Spin.