Fudzilla saw a demo of what a company has dubbed its Service integration platform ITC electric scooter. It uses MediaTek's LinkIt board to improve its scooter rental service. The idea is well out of its "proof of concept phase" and is being deployed in the 500 scooters Skuro Moto they are renting. out.
The company is renting SWAP AHAMANI electric scooters which are powered using GoTech 4840AH batteries and provide 70 KM at 40 KM/h. The company is using the Internet to track the scooter's GPS whereabouts and the battery charge level. This enables them to have a real time surveillance of the bikes.
MediaTek LinkIt monitors some crucial parameters including position and the battery charge level. It also use the GPRS module to send the data in to the cloud based web service. This is all part of the MediaTek Labs cloud Sandbox services that the company announced back in March.
The service lets you see the scooter that is the closest to you and if there is enough charge to get where you want to travel. If this is not geeky enough, users who want to rent the bike are using an RFID card to start the engine. This is not the first time we saw a cloud, app based renting system but putting them in an automotive solution is normally pricy. The MediaTek LinkIt solution is definitely inexpensive and offers a similar experience to other systems for a fraction of the price.
The hard working young team at Skuro Moto created an inexpensive solution and went against the automotive rental based tracking solution model. This is an Internet of Things design that is not really focused on the smallest form factor and battery life.. The scooter has more than enough battery juice to power the LinkIt based platform. The LinkIT One board and necessary antennas for GPS, and GPRS are part of the kit and they don't really cost any serious money.
If the battery is almost empty the chaps send a service man to replace them or charge them again. Since the service center knows a location of the scooter that potentially ended without a charge, the service people can be sent to the right location directly.
Since the LinkIt board sends GPS data, there is an anti theft component to the system, as the owner knows the GPS position of the scooter at any time.
This is a nice example of a business solution what can be done in relatively short amount of time and can significantly improve the quality of a business.
