Samos Wheels

Samos Wheels is a bike rental service, that aims to make cycling more accessible to the residents of Samos. We are going to upgrade with appropriate sensors and then use the preexisting bike parking in the town of Karlovassi. Clients will be able to use our mobile app to see if there are available bikes in the parking and rent them for a specific amount of time. They will be able to use the same app to pay the rental fee and to keep track of their expenses. If they need to extend the time they will be able to do it through our app. Finally, the app will notify the user if the rental time is running out and if the bike gets too far from the town. In the event, that the client forgets to park the bike at parking, a notification will be sent to the last user of the bike and us, alongside the location of the bike.
The need that our idea is trying to fulfill is the ability to cover long distances in Karlovassi, mainly between the buildings of the University of the Aegean. Karlovassi has very long distances between the various neighborhoods and the buildings of the University are spread too far away from each other, also there aren't any reliable forms of mass transport, thus forcing the people to walk great distances every day. Our idea aims to fill the gap in the transport system and provide people with an easier, faster and healthier way of commuting. Our rental service will aid students of the local university and make the classes more accessible to them, it will also help people who want to participate in bike marathons and various tours, that are often organized by the municipality of Karlovassi.
The market our idea is addressing is mainly the students of the University of the Aegean, who are trying to find a faster and more convenient way of commuting, and the people of Karlovassi who are trying to improve their health, fitness and their daily lives or want to lead a healthier and more environmentally friendly way of life. The main revenue generation mechanism is the rental fees that the customers will have to pay in order to use our bikes.
Our team is composed of students from various departments of the University of the Aegean. Some of us are from the Information and Communications Systems Department and we are going to handle the development of the mobile application and the hardware upgrade of the, while others are from Statistics and Actuarial Financial Mathematics and are going to handle the financial aspects of the company. Our members from ICSD have previous experience in the fields of mobile application development and web development, so they are perfectly able to build the application and a website if there is a need. Our members from the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Financial Mathematics will handle the budget, the expenses, and the feasibility of future expansions of our service.
Our idea is mostly practical and easy to implement in real-life scenarios, instead of innovative and futuristic. We selected a more down-to-earth approach and we are trying to cover the needs we personally have as students of the University of the Aegean. We spent time trying to figure out how to improve the transportation system of Karlovassi and find an economic, easy to implement, and eco-friendly solution. The uniqueness of the idea is that it is very simple and elegant but nevertheless no one has implemented something familiar to our service yet.