Affordable autonomous lightweight personal mobility

Self-driving cars and micro-mobility services are among the most important trends in the mobility landscape. While robo-taxi services are still in the pilot phase, residents in many cities today are adopting micro-mobility services as a more affordable and energy-efficient last-mile alternative to traditional forms of transportation. This dissertation proposes a new genre of urban mobility by bringing together the advantages of micro-mobility with those of the self-driving car. This dissertation presents a novel vehicle design that leverages the safety and autonomous navigation capabilities of a self-driving car while remaining ecologically responsible, lightweight, and affordable. In addition, the novel design enables new types of urban mobility services with the ability to operate autonomously in bike lanes and low-speed urban environments, and to provide door-to-door mobility delivery of both people and goods.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Program in Media Arts and Sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Lin, Michael Chia-Liang.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kent Larson.

• Program in Media Arts and Sciences

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/131000

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/131000