Optimization of bicycle distribution, efficient maintenance, and an increased number of rentals. All this is promised by a new application for employees of the company's Czech franchise Nextbike, the development of which is also being developed by a team of experts from the University of Technology. The goal is to digitize and streamline the daily activities of service engineers in the field – from moving bikes between stations to renewal of advertisements or repairs on site.

The app uses both historical and current data to generate a daily plan for each service engineer. It takes into account not only the number and distribution of bikes at individual stations, but also, for example, the weather, the nature of the location, the availability of e-bikes or the expected development of demand. The goal is to minimize situations where the user wants to rent a bike, but none are available. And at the same time, it is supposed to help make better use of the service engineers’ time.

"The optimization model can design the ideal sequence of field operations to maximize efficiency and at the same time cover the real demand for shared bikes," explains researcher Radovan Šomplák of the Institute of Process Engineering. "Thanks to this, we will save service engineers' time, reduce unnecessary travelling, and increase the availability of bicycles in places and times where they are most needed. The interesting thing about the calculation is that we actually predict the future: based on historical data, the model calculates that – in layman's terms – in two hours there will be a bicycle somewhere that is not there yet," adds Šomplák.

"Operating a fleet of thousands of bicycles is a demanding discipline. We are therefore glad that we were able to work with experts from BUT to develop an application that will make it more efficient. Thanks to this solution, the operation will be more efficient both from our point of view and from the point of view of cities and our users," explains Tomáš Karpov, Chief Operating Officer of Nextbike Czech Republic.

The development, which was financially supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, has been running since last January. Testing is currently underway in the field, where Nextbike employees and process engineers from BUT are going together. The results of the testing will be used for further adjustments to the algorithm and user interface, and it should be ready by the end of this year. Optimization functions are deployed directly into the company's application so that its service engineers do not have to have another separate application to work with.

From Brno to Europe?

Students of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Technology also participated in the development. One of them is Jakub Hadaš, who conceived the development of the map and tracing system interface as his diploma thesis. "In the interactive map, we can see the real conditions of the bikes at the stations. The service engineers can choose which stations they want to take into account or, conversely, turn on the calculation for the entire area, set parameters such as the start and end of the route, the length of field work, and the weather, and start the calculation. The result can then be easily displayed as a navigation on the phone, which will guide the car to the next stop and action. On the spot, it marks the real situation and the work done, which further refines the calculation. The application is designed as mobile and fully adapted for use in the field," describes Hadaš, who defended his "bikesharing" diploma with flying colors.

The project was created on the initiative of the BUT team. The researchers approached the Czech branch of Nextbike with a proposal for cooperation, inspired by the analogy with optimization in waste collection, which they are also working on. In addition to the technical aspect, the project also brings a direct societal impact: more affordable bikes, reduced operating costs, and improved use of resources. The Czech Nextbike, which operates the system in dozens of cities across the country, is a franchise of a German company. Thanks to a unified data management system, the application, if it proves successful in the Czech Republic, can easily be expanded to foreign locations.

"Just to give you an idea, Nextbike operates over 600 bikes and 200 stations in Brno. The demand and placement of bikes change dynamically according to the time of day, weather, or special events," describes Vlastimír Nevrlý of the BUT development team. "Our system is designed to adapt to different cities and needs and, for example, to locations where more service engineers work for the company, who could "poach on each other’s turf", which again reduces the efficiency of their work," concludes Nevrlý.