• Swindon & Wiltshire Tech
• Wednesday October 28 2026

UWE Bristol graduate’s AI camera focuses on e-scooter danger

A UWE Bristol robotics graduate has raised £350,000 to fit rental e-scooters with an AI-powered “safety eye” designed to spot pavement riding, pedestrian near-misses and road hazards before they become casualties.

Faizan Mir, 24, founded Bristol startup Nearhuman after a friend was struck by an e-scooter.

His company has developed a compact, forward-facing camera module that sits inside the scooter’s stem and uses on-device artificial intelligence to monitor journeys in real time.

The technology can flag dangerous riding behaviour and hazards as they happen, then share insights with e-scooter operators and local councils. Councils could use the street-level data to identify problems with roads, cycle lanes and pavements — potentially fixing the infrastructure that contributes to accidents.

The investment comes from SFC Capital and arrives as e-scooter safety becomes an increasingly urgent issue. Department for Transport figures show casualties from e-scooter collisions in Great Britain rose from 484 in 2020 to 1,477 in 2025.

Mir said: “The hire e-scooters and bikes are making cities much better — they are an eco-friendly mode of transport, but there are a lot of safety issues with them. I’ve had incidents using them myself — there are many challenges. Some people ride on the pavement and it makes it unsafe for other pavement users.

“As the number of cities offering rental e-scooter trials grows, so does the accident rate. And there are lots of accidents that happen that don’t get reported or recorded. I recently read a study that found that e-scooter accidents happen 20 times more per mile than cars, which is significantly higher.

“We see our technology as a way of helping make micromobility safer.”

Mir graduated with a first in BEng (Hons) Robotics in 2024 and built Nearhuman in UWE Bristol’s Launch Space incubator. He credits his father and school principal in Kashmir for steering him from flamboyant inventions towards technology with social value.

He recalled: “One of the things that resonates is that I built an Iron Man suit that threw out flames to look cool, and I took it to school and showed it to classmates. Instead of giving me a punishment, my principal said ‘You’re free to go and use our laboratories to build things, but build things for a better good’.

“That’s the same teaching my father gave to me. He said ‘How will a flamethrower help someone? If you want to build something in your life, build something that will help humanity and make this world a better place’. That’s the philosophy I’m living with.”

Unlike earlier attempts in Australia and Europe to bolt bulky cameras onto scooters, Nearhuman’s module is small enough to fit inside the stem. Its edge AI works privately without relying on cloud connectivity, and future versions could automatically slow a scooter when it detects danger.

Mir said the funding “kind of felt unreal”, adding: “Once the money had landed, I couldn’t believe it and was in a shock for a few days.

“We had interest from investors in the USA but I wanted to get a UK investor on board, such as SFC. The UK has given me so much and I wanted to give back to the UK, and the university.”

He is supported by fellow UWE graduates Amin Alhawary, Hatim Shaherawala, Tobias Dawson and Yerim Mohamed, alongside COO Ali Ekbal, R&D engineer Dushyant Goel and legal intern Cameron Setiadi.

“The support I’ve received from UWE has been incredibly valuable in helping me build the business,” Mir said. “I’m particularly grateful to the Student Ventures and Launch Space teams.”