The Advanced Technologies of Slow Mobility

I am an avid walker. I try to accomplish ten kilometres a day, or more. These are not just hikes but discoveries of the time of year, showcasing spring flowers, colours of the autumn trees, and the delights of summer and winter. I walk in the woods, along neighbourhood streets and through urban centres. All delightful. I share this space with my wheeled friends on bicycles, wheelchairs and, increasingly, on electric scooters. I might even have to share it with cars and trucks as long as there are safety barriers, such as sidewalks or raised concrete barriers.

Walking is among the best ways to see the world. It’s at human scale and at a pace that the brain can absorb and synthesise the environment around it. The other forms of slow mobility such as bicycles, scooters and wheelchairs offer somewhat similar attributes, but at a slightly faster speed; they tend to miss some of the subtler nuances of space that a pedestrian may experience. Nevertheless, all of these slow mobility capabilities are being enhanced with advances in technology, which makes them more enjoyable and useful experiences than ever before.

Take walking as an example. Analog walking technologies are basic, non-digital applications, such as a walking stick, sunglasses, watches, sneakers and baseball caps. Maybe a radio with earphones is an added plus. However, with the digital age, augmented with the Internet, LoRa-sensor (long range wireless) technologies, and, more recently artificial intelligence, the door has been opened to create entirely new opportunities for the lowly act of walking, biking or travelling the streets in a wheelchair.

What else will we see emerge that will aid the slow mobility ecosystems?

Let me take you for a walk with me. I start out by putting on my smartwatch, tucking my smartphone into my back pocket, lacing up my advanced runners and putting on my favourite baseball cap. In the leg pocket of my walking shorts, I include a water bottle, my airpods and, for nighttime walks, a small portable flashlight. My wife reminds me to put on my sunscreen, an advancement in health sciences that will become vital in the decades to come due to climate change. The basic digital technology that differentiates my walks from the past decades to now are the combination of smartwatch, smartphone, airpod, and their connectivity to the Internet. On the smartphone are apps that allow me to work, communicate and be entertained. My smartwatch applications indicate the distance that I will cover, my heart rate, whether I met my goals or not, and other health-related attributes from the walk. And if I needed to, I could share these with my healthcare team who might be monitoring my health.

And my smartwatch can act as my personal trainer, urging me to continue with my exercises and to stand every hour. Other apps include access to my messages, email, weather alerts and communications. I can access reports, PowerPoint presentations, photos, videos and past communications and correspondence. While walking, I can take pictures and videos, and participate in Zoom calls, office meetings and sales calls. I can even host a public meeting. My smartphone receives, sends and stores vast amounts of data including correspondence, reports, pictures and videos, and has apps that can calculate and even analyse on the go. Add ChatGPT or its equivalent open artificial intelligence application, and there is little that you cannot do while walking that you can do in the home or office. I don’t expect that the world will shift from home or office to work while walking the streets, but my point is basically that you could if you wanted to, and in many ways, over the past several years, I have.

Electrified scooters, segways and one-wheeled self-balancing mono-boards will increasingly become acceptable modes of active mobility

But looking forward what else will we see emerge that will aid the slow mobility ecosystems? In wheelchair environments, massive change has occurred to make these more lightweight, transportable and more efficient for the physically challenged and senior members of our society to move through our cities. Lightweight and advanced designs have created a wide variety of wheelchairs available to offer physically challenged individuals to participate in sports and go on long-distance excursions using electric battery-enabled power and guidance designs to navigate on streets and trails. In my book, Eden 2084, I envisage wheelchairs as a dominant future individual movement system, replacing scooters and segways for many physically fit individuals to begin to use modified versions of wheelchairs to move around. In this case, both physically able and physically challenged people will have access to similar vehicles with advanced technologies to move speedily through the city and also use it in controlled pedestrian speed environments such as in interior spaces.

The advanced technologies for these wheelchairs include applications that will help to make them autonomous, giving the rider the freedom to observe the world around them while this form of AV (Autonomous Vehicle) makes its way to its intended destination. The autonomous wheelchair will pursue its path via a digital map, curated with the latest information about obstacles, pathway conditions and things that it meets along its trip, including pedestrians, dogs and temporary obstructions. The occupant in the wheelchair will be able to modify their trip anytime, perhaps even with advanced mental telepathy applications. Recent Harvard-led research advances in brain-computer interfaces have shown promise in our ability to transmit our mental instructions directly from our brains to computers capable of managing the operations of specific devices.

The wheelchair can also act as a delivery vehicle without its occupant being in its seat, if necessary. Drone delivery along streets and in the air is now actively being pursued and will become commonplace in future years. Along the way, with LoRa sensing capabilities and other applications to service AVs of all kinds, slow mobility vehicles such as wheelchairs and bicycles will benefit from triggered traffic signals based on demand load, fair sharing of intersection loads and advanced warning systems so that alternative routes could be chosen if an obstruction or traffic condition ahead has made the original chosen route less desirable.

Other technologies will help to safely space these wheelchairs from cars, bicycles and pedestrians. In AV mode these will be instantly configured. In personal mobility use, alerts may be offered in the form of a sound signal, vibration, automatic correction of the wheelchair, or a visual signal. These applications can also help to monitor and control travel speeds or simply make recommendations on alternate routes to take.

Cities such as Toronto have yet to fully accept bicycles as a key mode of transportation

Cyclists will also be able to take advantage of many of the technologies available to pedestrians utilising the Internet in its many forms and applications. Additionally, with access to the frame, bicycles have been electrified to aid in long-distance mobility and have many of the attributes that were described for wheelchair users. Electrified scooters, segways and one-wheeled self-balancing mono-boards will increasingly become acceptable modes of active mobility helping people to find options for individual movement in cities.

Exoskeletons are wearable machines that augment human capabilities and are currently in use in the automotive, construction and agricultural industries to aid in helping workers lift or move heavy items, and in medicine to assist in rehabilitation, most notably in supporting walking after spinal injuries. In the future, assuming that the weight of the structural equipment can be reduced, and the battery system can be enhanced, electrified exoskeletons may be another alternative to assist people in their everyday mobility needs. Electrified biped exoskeletons provide wheeled capabilities and could offer physically challenged individuals enhanced mobility options in the future. Combined with segway-enhanced self-balancing wheeled devices, advanced AI-empowered exoskeletons will be able to convert from walking speed to higher speeds to keep up with other AVs on streets and dedicated highways.

Like all electric vehicles, charging stations for electrified wheelchairs, bicycles, scooters and advanced exoskeletons will become increasingly available as the electric car market expands. Advanced electric charging at home, office and on the road will become commonplace. Advanced charging techniques are being explored, such as charging strips, charging curbs and charging on the move.

For all electric-based mobility, storage will be critical. Today, lithium-ion batteries are the most common storage capabilities, providing great versatility in storing energy to operate our wireless devices such as laptops and smartphones. But “lithium-ion batteries also have significant drawbacks, most notably being harmful to the environment” due to their toxicity, risks of exploding and causing fires, and limited availability as a resource to be mined. Scientists are working with more environmentally friendly alternatives such as sodium-ion batteries and metals including magnesium, zinc and aluminum, all of which are relatively abundant, safe from explosions and non-toxic. However, these batteries are still in their early stages of development and commercialisation.

Another mobility issue is that cities are still dominated by automobiles. Changing culture and behaviours will be more difficult than advancing technologies. Using transit as an alternative has been in the lexicon of policymakers the world over. More recently with the success of using bicycles as a key mode of transportation in places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam and the discoveries of bicycle use in places such as Barcelona and Paris, other cities are more actively pursuing the policy of expanding bicycle use in their cities. However, where cities such as Toronto have yet to fully accept bicycles as a key mode of transportation, they have more work ahead of them to advocate and perfect the inclusion of bicycles into their city. For instance, in 2023, the mayoral debate included a candidate who advocated getting rid of bicycle lanes in many parts of the city. Happily, that candidate did not win, and the new mayor is a bicycle-friendly advocate. However, this example points to the fact that many people have yet to accept bicycles as part of the city’s mobility choices for which the city will invest in the necessary infrastructure and policies to make it an inclusive part of their city.

Physical infrastructure safely separating bicycles from cars, trucks and buses is another key ingredient. In a study of hospitalisations in the United States, bicycle-related hospital visits for injuries were nearly three times that of motor vehicle injuries. Prioritising slow mobility in specific zones, redirecting them from higher-speed areas and creating suitable barriers between them and motorised vehicles should be a key prerogative of city and regional planners in creating efficient and safe mobility of all kinds.

The concept of making the essentials for our daily lives to be closer to our homes has taken root

Safely separating pedestrians from vehicles and even bicycles, motorised wheelchairs and scooters is another key issue. Separating any wheeled capability from the spaces dedicated to pedestrians and ensuring the experience of walking is safer and more pleasant in our cities should be a basic requirement in cities. Bicycles, wheelchairs, golf carts and scooters need to stay within their lanes and need to respect pedestrian areas and the rules of the road. Many accidents at intersections, in parks and along pedestrian bridges could be avoided with strict enforcement and penalties that eventually may help to change behaviours necessary to make all slow mobility work with one another.

Around the world, people are rediscovering the value of slow mobility in their communities. Accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, the 15-minute city concept, developed by Spanish Professor Carlos Moreno in 2016, has been adopted by Paris and influenced many cities from Barcelona to Edmonton. However, it has become controversial for some of its residents as it impacts the free reign and storage of private vehicles in these cities. Nevertheless, urban planners are continuing to explore ways to create better urban spaces and experiences and find ways to help their citizens become less dependent on automobiles. Hence, the concept of making the essentials for our daily lives to be closer to our homes has taken root. These include designing for shopping, work, entertainment, parks and schools within 15 minutes from home.

As I walk from my home, airpod in my ears, I listen to Professor Moreno’s 2020 Ted Talk extolling the virtues of giving local inhabitants access to essential services to live, learn and thrive within their immediate vicinity. Instead, I see around me a large number of parked cars along the street and cars travelling along the street at high speeds past the shops and restaurants that could be more pleasantly designed to accommodate outdoor cafes, widened sidewalks and designated lanes for other slow mobility. It will take time in my community for this change to occur. But as more people take to walking, riding their bicycles and choosing transit over cars, there is hope. As these and other advances in technology offer new options for slow-wheeled mobility, my (and possibly your) community may resemble a future reflecting the 15-minute community through changes in market demand, community culture and changes in personal behaviours.

All photos: Freepik