China’s bike-sharing platforms connect with BeiDou satellite navigation network to improve efficiency
- The bike-sharing industry has seen an uptick in business amid the coronavirus pandemic, as more commuters shift away from crowded modes of transport
- Hellobike, one of the biggest bike-sharing platforms in the country, said that all its bikes were connected to the BeiDou navigation system
China's bike-sharing companies have joined hands with the country's home-grown BeiDou navigation system to offer users a better experience based on improved operations and more precise positioning data.
After the launch of the final satellite in the BeiDou global navigation system last week, bike-sharing platforms said the Chinese rival of the US global positioning system (GPS) will enable them to manage their fleets more efficiently through more precise location data.
Hellobike, one of the biggest bike sharing platforms in the country, announced that all its bikes were connected to the BeiDou positioning system, while Didi Chuxing-owned Qingju Bike said its Geographic bike, equipped with a BeiDou high-precision navigation chip, has been put into operation in Shenzhen, Wuhan and Beijing.
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“With the help of BeiDou, the positioning of the bikes can be determined to within centimetres. Operators can access information on bikes on the road in real-time, and effectively control traffic flow and solve the problem of vehicle accumulation,” Qingju Bike said in a statement.
Alibaba Group Holding-owned Hellobike said all of its bikes were equipped with a smart lock with a BeiDou positioning device that can receive satellite signals while sending location information to the ride sharing platform.
Hellobike’s data centre can receive hundreds of millions of positioning data daily and track each bike’s real-time location to forecast bike demand for each area. Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.
“For our users, BeiDou's high-precision positioning function can help them find and return bikes more easily … for us, it can help the platform more accurately interface with the users’ riding and parking behaviour," Hellobike said in a statement.
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BeiDou, meaning Plough constellation, or the Big Dipper in Mandarin, provides access to high-accuracy navigation, positioning and timing as well as communication services.
Food delivery giant Meituan Dianping said Mobike, which it acquired two years ago, was the first bike-sharing platform to offer a smart system using both BeiDou and GPS in 2015. Later, the company used the BeiDou high-precision position module and real-time kinematic positioning technique, as well as the Internet of Things, to manage the platform more efficiently.
