Shared e-scooters and bikes from Lime will soon come under tighter control in Prague.

The company has begun testing Captur, an artificial intelligence system that evaluates whether a scooter has been parked properly before a ride can be officially ended.

The process is simple: at the end of each journey, the rider must take a photo of the scooter. Captur then analyzes the image in real time.

If the machine blocks a sidewalk, building entrance, or another public space, the rider receives an immediate warning and cannot finish the ride until the scooter is moved.

According to Lime, the aim is to reduce conflicts over abandoned scooters in Prague’s busy streets. “We want our vehicles to serve the city without getting in the way of people who do not use them,” explained Václav Petr, Lime’s general manager for Czechia and Hungary.

“Thanks to Captur, the feedback comes instantly. Riders see the problem at the moment of parking, when they can still correct it, instead of waiting for one of our employees to review the photo.”

Early results from more than 70 cities worldwide show that improper parking cases dropped by about 15 percent after Captur was introduced. The number of riders repeatedly violating the rules has also gone down, while the system’s ability to recognize wrongly parked scooters is accurate in more than eight out of ten cases.

The technology, created by a London-based startup also called Captur, is designed to improve over time. In the latest version, riders simply align the scooter in a frame on the app’s screen; the software automatically takes and evaluates the picture, eliminating the need for the rider to worry about photo quality.

The Captur system is already in use outside the sharing economy. Companies such as Amazon, DHL, and Google rely on it for quality checks in logistics and other operations.

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