European micromobility provider Bolt is using the sensors on its scooters to map roads and show how accessible they are for people with disabilities.

Bolt scooters already use accelerometers, gyroscopes, GPS receivers and cameras to support vehicle safety, maintenance and product development.

Wheels4Wheels is a pilot project that uses data from shared scooters to improve accessibility information in digital maps. It processes data from these sensors to identify characteristics that may affect people with limited mobility and assigns each street segment a score on a five-point scale, ranging from smooth and passable to terrain that a wheelchair user cannot cross.

“Every year, our scooters cover millions of kilometres across hundreds of cities, registering every bump, slope and uneven surface along the way,” said Ardo Reinsalu, director of vehicles at Bolt. “Wheels4Wheels takes that a step further by making the same information available directly to the people who need it most.”

The first Wheels4Wheels pilot took place in Tallinn, Estonia. Scooters collected data across eight city districts while volunteers manually mapped accessibility data points across the city. The team then compared these results with data generated by Bolt scooters.

The pilot produced 40.5 million data points, more than 162,000 phototelemetry frames and more than 66,000 surface ratings.

A single scooter ride matched the manually verified data almost eight times out of ten. When several scooters travelled the same street, the rate rose to around nine times out of ten. The pilot also identified routes that appeared accessible on existing maps but were difficult or impossible to navigate in practice.

Wheels4Wheels was designed around the needs of wheelchair users, but the same information can support other people who face barriers when moving around cities. This includes parents with pushchairs, older people using mobility aids, travellers carrying luggage and people recovering from injuries.

“Accessibility has long been part of Bolt’s mission to make cities work better for everyone,” said Mare Heinluht, diversity and inclusion manager at Bolt (bolt.eu). “For someone using a wheelchair, a route is more than a line on a screen. The condition of the pavement, the presence of a kerb ramp or the steepness of a slope can determine whether a journey is possible at all.”

Around 80 million people worldwide rely on a wheelchair. However, digital maps often provide limited information about whether a route is accessible. They may show whether a route includes steps, but not if the pavement is uneven, where a kerb has a dropped edge or where a path ends unexpectedly. Those gaps aren’t just inconvenient, they can make a journey impossible.

“Being in a wheelchair trains you for the unexpected,” said Hendra Raud, an inclusive mobility advocate from Tallinn, Estonia. “Cobblestone makes your entire body ache, stairs mean you need to be carried by someone and not having a ramp can mess up your entire schedule.”

Wheels4Wheels (wheels4wheels.com) aims to fix this by mapping conditions along a route, not just the accessibility of the destination. The information is then contributed to OpenStreetMap (www.openstreetmap.org), where it can be used by cities, developers and navigation services.