Bicycle is an important transportation tool in busy cities. Riding bicycles not only eases urban traffic jam, but is good to health. Bicycle is a transportation tool greatly supported by US and European governments, therefore more and more public bicycle stations are put into construction one after another. The construction of public bicycle stations has brought much convenience to bicycle users, but it has caused many issues, such as the huge investments, time-consuming station rebuilding, unclear vehicle condition in stations (users cannot obtain the information whether or not there is bicycle at the station), uneven resource allocation, etc.
The US famous bicycle rental company Social Bicycles (hereinafter referred to as Sobi) has established a loose-type bicycle rental business by introducing the construction idea of the Internet of Things and mass data. Sobi has added an IOT module to the back seat of its bicycles, so as to realize real-time track and management of bicycles, background mass data processing, etc. Users can rent a bicycle by simply using the Apps installed in their phone or computer to search rentable bicycles nearby and enter the password provided by the background, without having to going to a specific bicycle station. And users can return their bicycle by locking it anywhere, without having to going to a specific bicycle station.
Sobi Internet loose-type bicycle rental system is a typical advanced system constructed based on the combination of Internet and mass data. Currently, Sobi has already launched its businesses in Buffalo, New York and two west coast cities.