A Connected Swarm Cycling System

Abstract

Social group cycling shows a positive impact on facilitating urban cycling as a sustainable means of mobility while increasing cycling safety in urban areas [1]. We present a new urban mobility concept, Connected Swarm Cycling, that creates a group of people cycling together for a while in a common direction or destination. We assume that the concept of Swarm Cycling can significantly change the mobility behaviour of citizens and will be a building block of green mobility for sustainable cities in the future. Utilizing an OSRM11http://project-osrm.org/ routing service with support of trip intersection computing, the system inducts the cyclists into a cycling swarm. The swarms are formed automatically via peer-to-peer connection when cyclists come in proximity, and the information of the swarm and individual cyclist will be synchronized within the swarm via a Nearby Mesh Network. Supporting the implicit interaction within or between swarms, smart wearables are utilized to realize use cases like swarm member identification or signalling in case of merging or splitting of swarms. In this paper, we also present a technical description of our system, including the protocol and network model to support the coordination and synchronization within the swarms.