Personal Mobility Route Planning for Mixed Self-Driving Modes
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing navigation systems for small electric vehicles, such as mobility scooters and electric wheelchairs, face challenges in providing optimal routes that consider sidewalk-specific traffic regulations and user preferences, leading to uncomfortable or unexpected user experiences during self-driving services.
Innovation Solution
An operation system that generates optimal travel routes by combining unmanned and manned driving modes, considering traffic zone restrictions and user preferences, using a centralized server with integrated navigation and remote monitoring capabilities to manage and control the vehicles.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If conventional route planning methods are used for self-driving wheelchairs, then the navigation system is simple, but the user experience deteriorates due to uncomfortable circling or detouring behaviors
Solution Approach 1:
The navigation system dynamically adjusts route planning based on driving mode (manual or self-driving). For self-driving mode, the system generates optimized routes that avoid circling and detouring by considering sidewalk travel constraints and directly approaching destinations from allowable directions, making the navigation behavior adaptive to operational context
Solution Approach 2:
The navigation system acts as an intermediary between traffic regulations and route generation. It incorporates knowledge of sidewalk travel rules (traveling on sidewalks, right-hand roadside strips, or road edges) as intermediate constraints to generate legally compliant and user-friendly routes that avoid uncomfortable maneuvers
2Productivity
If the vehicle travels on the left side of the road to pick up users or reach destinations, then service efficiency is improved, but traffic regulation compliance deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of making the vehicle reverse on sidewalks to reach left-side destinations (which would violate regulations), the navigation system inverts the approach by planning forward-only routes that approach destinations from the right side or via acceptable maneuvers that maintain compliance while achieving the same service objective
3Adaptability or versatility
If reversing is allowed on sidewalks for self-driving vehicles, then route flexibility is improved, but safety and pedestrian comfort deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The navigation system performs preliminary route planning that proactively avoids sidewalk reversing by selecting alternative routes or approaches from the beginning. It pre-calculates compliant paths that achieve destination access without requiring reverse maneuvers on pedestrian areas, preventing rather than reacting to the problem
Data Source
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AI summary
[Problem] To provide an operation system for a small electric vehicle that can present optimal routes from multiple perspectives combining dispatching by unmanned self-driving, manned self-driving, and manual driving, and is advantageous for providing navigation and an automatic transportation service in accordance with user preferences. [Solution] The operation system comprises a route generation part that generates, in response to a dispatch request from a user communication terminal connected through the communication system, a first travel route by unmanned driving from a current location of the vehicle to a pick-up location for a user associated with the user communication terminal and a second travel route by manned driving from the pick-up location for the user to a destination location, the second travel route includes a first driving pattern of driving through all segments in a self-driving mode and at least one second driving pattern including a segment driven through in a self-driving mode and a segment driven through in a manual driving mode, and the second travel route and the estimated time required to drive according to each of the first driving pattern and the second driving pattern are presented on the user communication terminal.