
One Way to Keep the Sidewalk Clear: Remote-Controlled Scooter-Bots - cienega
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/10/self-driving-scooter-tortoise-technology-mobility-sidewalks/600013/
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lacker
When I read the title I was hoping it was a strategy to remove trash, needles,
and human waste from the streets of San Francisco. But no, the only problem
addressed here is keeping scooters off the sidewalk.

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situational87
I made eye contact with a homeless person pooping again today. This has become
a regular part of life in the United States.

Thank god we have a log(n) solution to the epidemic of scooters on streets.
Thank you technology. I hope all the Series A investors were able to get that
new electric Porsche and didn't have to settle for a Corvette like some filthy
commoner.

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wavefunction
>I made eye contact with a homeless person pooping again today. This has
become a regular part of life in the United States.

It's certainly not a regular part of life in the United States. It may be (but
probably isn't) a regular part of your own life in the United States.

I've made eye contact with a pooping homeless person in the United States zero
times over four decades of life.

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mdorazio
I applaud this idea, but at the same time I feel like the use cases where this
will actually work are pretty limited. I doubt the scooters will be able to
cross a street or navigate any kind of actual obstacles, so you're going to be
limited to corralling them somewhere on the block that isn't occluded by
obstacles. Also, scooters are just an awful target for autonomous movement for
the same reasons they're pretty crappy to ride: high center of gravity, small
solid wheels, and no real built-in self-balancing features (bikes self-balance
to a reasonable degree due to having large wheels acting as gyroscopes).

If you want to get rid of humans for pickup/dropoff and charging, you'd be
better off building super drones that can literally pick up scooters wherever
they are and drop them on a roving flatbed for charging. Or at least put an IR
strobe beacon on them so they're easier to find either by chargers or locating
drones.

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arijun
Not that it detracts from your point, but it’s a common myth that the
gyroscopic effect from the wheels is the main reason bicycles are easy to
balance. Take a look at
[https://ezramagazine.cornell.edu/SUMMER11/ResearchSpotlight....](https://ezramagazine.cornell.edu/SUMMER11/ResearchSpotlight.html)

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thisisbrians
This is such a laughably dismissible idea, I don't even know where to start:
navigating sidewalks and crosswalks autonomously is even more difficult than
autonomously navigating the roadways (what with all the standardized signals,
markings, rules, etc.) and yet here we are pitching it as if we already have
the technology to accomplish this to any useful degree. Is it going to locate
and push the correct crosswalk button to make sure it has a chance to cross
the street safely and legally? Also, what are these things going to do when
drunk (or otherwise unhelpful) passerby inevitably kick them over, rendering
them completely immobile? This is 100% innovation theater.

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asdfman123
Can someone please come up with AI software that generates buzzword-mashing-up
startup ideas, gathers investor capital, hires 23 year olds to work 70 hours a
week, and turns around and sells it to another tech company for a few million
dollars?

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jdlyga
Another way to keep the sidewalks clear is to not allow them to begin with.

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lapinot
I'm sure emusk got some spare falcon 1 they could use to actually retrofit
this concept onto standard scooters. /s Shall we remind ourselves the problem
we started with here was to transport people? I thing i got lost at the point
where sweatshop vc corps backed by surveillance hungry bigtechs flooded an
unregulated market with gadgets that now litter the public space. If the form
seems to look like a troll, the content is not. Here's some reference on why
these are greenwashed gadgets:

[https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab2da8/...](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab2da8/pdf)

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landcoctos
Or you know the people using the scooters could park them properly.

