Future watch: MIT’s ready-to-fold RoboScooter

The RoboScooter. It's creators call it 'the cuter scooter'

Looking for a solution to traffic jams in Asian cities, the Smart Cities group at MIT has come up with the RoboScooter – a folding electric scooter, which can be placed throughout cities (perhaps at places like metro rail stations, bus stands and airports) for rental.

The RoboScooter was actually created at the behest of the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan, and SYM, a Taiwanese scooter manufacturer. The two were, apparently, looking at finding a solution to the incessant traffic jams in Taiwanese cities.

‘We looked at existing folding bicycles and we looked at origami,’ says Professor William J. Mitchell, under whose supervision the RoboScooter was created. And the Prof adds that his students call the vehicle, ‘the cuter scooter.’ Ah, well. In any case, according to Prof Mitchell’s plan, cities would need to put up recharging points at various places, computers would track RoboScooter rentals, and each scooter would be traceable via GPS.

And here's a video of the folding RoboScooter...

Hate scooters? You'll probably like these:
The 2008 BMW HP2 Sport. Cool!
The 2008 Suzuki GSX-R1000...
220bhp Aprilia V4-powered superbike...!
The HOTTEST MotoGP paintjob in 2007...
The Ducati 1098-powered Bimota DB7...
The 2008 Yamaha R1. Two decades of 'The One'...