destination(s). There, no longer needed, the ADCB autonomously returns toa waiting point or the next user (Fig. 1).One striving advantage of ADCBs in5th generation bike-sharing (ADCB-system) is that they avoid manual rebalancing problems (Zug et al., 2019)and, therefore, offer significant reductions in operational costs. Further ad-vantages (Zug et al., 2019) can be found in economically viable applicationsin less dense urban areas, better public transport integration through re-served on-demand provision at stations, and the possibility to transportcargo.In social sciences, research on autonomous vehicles heavily focuses oncars (BDP, 2017), especially on risk perception and the appropriate level ofautomation–in terms of the actual involvement of human beings presentin the car in the actual driving processes, i.e. the possibility to intervene man-ually in the autonomous system. Simply transferring the insights producedfrom this area of research to a more bike-focused context is not feasible. Awhole new line of research is necessary, in which–under the comprehensionof not only technology acceptance models (Venkatesh and Bala, 2008;Venkatesh et al., 2003) and research on human-technology interaction(Gaudiello et al., 2016), but also general ideas on acceptance and mobility re-search (Zmud and Sener, 2017)–new insights appropriate for (cargo) bikeusage are explored. Such socio-technical developments must be embeddedin the desirable futures of city dwellers. The needs and wishes of differentuser groups must therefore not only be taken into account during technicaldevelopment. This is necessary to enable social sciences to properly assessthe acceptance and acceptability of new mobility solutions, as presentedabove in the form of ADCBs. The perceived safety and acceptability are themain focus points–on the one side, they have to be assessed for pedestrians,other bikers or drivers interacting with the autonomous bike in everydaytravel; on the other side, future users of the autonomous cargo bike shouldbe involved in design decisions to ensure their pleasant and comfortableusage. Users and their ideas, needs, and preferences should thus be a partof the construction process.Looking at the challenge of future mobility from a more economicperspective, such a transfer seems more feasible. Research and practicalknowledge on the system design of bike-sharing systems until the 4thgeneration and cargo bike sharing is well established for businessmodels (Büttner et al., 2011;ITDP, 2013;Koska et al., 2014), usage pat-terns (Becker and Rudolf, 2018;Wagner et al., 2016), planningprocesses (Frade and Ribeiro, 2015;Garcia-Gutierrez et al., 2014;Neumann-Saavedra et al., 2015), and rebalancing (e.g.(Dell'Amicoet al., 2014;Regue and Recker, 2014). Unfortunately, this extensiveknowledgebasedoesnotprovideinformationoncriticalaspectsofasystem and service design like required lead time for provision at theuser's location, cargo demands, requirements towards renting, andcharging stations. Following, the critical investigation of the system de-sign and the users' preference towards them is a necessary prerequisitefor developing a 5th generation bike-sharing.Consequently, the aim of this paper isfirstly to derive insights into thedesign of ADCBs in terms of user-centric design, acceptability, andhuman-machine interaction. For this, an overview of different needs andperceptions from both future users and other road users interacting withan ADCB is provided. The second aim is to achieve thefirst landmarks forthe design of an ADCB-system. The paper, therefore, structures as follows:InSection 2, more theoretical background is offered.Section 3introducesthe methodologies used. InSection 4the results are presented anddiscussed in the followingSection 5. Finally,Section 6concludes thiscontribution.2. Theory2.1. Autonomous driving in the discourse of acceptance researchAcceptance research aims to go beyond mere research into opinions andattitudes towards new products and, in the sense of anticipatory social mar-ket research, to identify needs, ideas, desires, hopes, and fears, and to relatethese to a socio-technical system (Hüsing et al., 2002;Lenz and Fraedrich,2015). In this way, complex areas such as the transport system can be ade-quately classified in its further development, and potentials and options canbe coordinated (Astor and Bovenschulte, 2001). Acceptance developswithin the framework of social and technical construction processes. It isto be understood as a variable, dynamic construct that changes over timeas well as concerning the prevailing conditions through values andnorms. This dynamic is also reflected in the fact that depending on thephase of an innovation (development, implementation, appropriation,...), very different groups of actors are relevant and must be taken into ac-count accordingly (Geels, 2005).Fig. 1.Vision of a Future Mobility: Using the ADCB in an Urban Setting.Graphic by Devina Manoeva, 2019.K. Krause et al.Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives 6 (2020) 1001352