This futuristic school bus designed with the help of AI uses inflatable pieces to add some fun to bus journeys

Anyone who has ever ridden a school bus to and from school has probably imagined their transport turning into a Magic School Bus or the Knight Bus the Harry Potter movies. Alas, we’re still stuck with the boring old buses that can only bring us to where we’re supposed to go. But thanks to Artificial Intelligence and some designers’ wild imagination, we can actually come with more interesting concepts that may someday become reality, or at least a more realistic version of it.

Designer: Shail Patel

An architect has tried to imagine what a futuristic school bus would look like if it was also where the students are studying and not just something that transports them. The Mutated School Bus was created with the help of AI design tool Midjourney and is both surreal and functional. In short, while it’s pretty fun and playful, it can become an actual practical mode of transportation and education someday even if for now it looks like something from a science fiction movie.

The bus looks like a rolling classroom with its multi-story stacked bus structure with the signature yellow color that a lot of school buses carry. With its vertical form that has a combination of circular, oblong, and square windows and rooms, it looks like something the Minions will fit right in with. The idea for the concept is to make these futuristic buses a fun mobile school that kids will look forward to, even if what they’re going to there mostly is study while going around the city.

Of course, there are a lot of practical things that you have to think about if ever this concept will become reality. The amount of energy it will take to power such a vehicle will not be something that Mother Earth will be happy about. What if the students have motion sickness? How will the bus be able to hold in place all the things that will be placed inside? Those are things that the product designers will have to think about eventually but for now, these are fun designs and maybe a vision of what mobile education will look like.

The post This futuristic school bus designed with the help of AI uses inflatable pieces to add some fun to bus journeys first appeared on Yanko Design.

This semi-amphibious bus is a capable rescue vehicle for city flooding scenarios

The automotive world is gradually focusing more on multipurpose vehicles that serve other useful purposes rather than just getting from point A to B. Amphibious designs is one way of doing it, and the Estuary Hopper by Jordan Barnes is an excellent example of a feasible craft.

This concept designed in collaboration with electric vehicle company Arrival is more sided towards the semi-amphibious built category with its swift transforming aesthetics. To be precise, the Estuary Hopper is a city bus on any ordinary day, but as things turn ugly, the reliable public transport turns into a potent emergency response vehicle. The designer envisions it to bring dual mobility across the Gloucestershire floodplain. The Amphibious chassis of this cool bus adapts to the rising water levels to propel forward even on waterlogged surfaces.

Designer: Jordan Barnes and Arrival

In the event of an emergency like a flash flood when the River Severn rages, the public transport comes on its own thanks to the amphibious chassis. The large rugged tires provide the needed traction to move forward even in the most treacherous flooding conditions. There are attachments included like the exterior pontoons that can be hooked on to the stills. This way the vehicle adds extra space to haul loads or rescue people.

To take on the fury of nature, the vehicle has a central spine running along the length to support the interior blocks and the modular panels. This also permits flexible configurable setups – for example, the mid-sized bus for the usual commute and the narrower setup for movement through narrow spaces. There’s an added row of folding seats along the side to provide more space and aid in loading wheelchairs or luggage. To top it off, the Estuary Hopper bus has a very attractive form that’s way ahead of the current time. Perhaps it is designed keeping in mind the future of mobility that’ll be dominated by a fleet of multipurpose vehicles – both on land and on the waters. Let’s not forget the air too with flying cars coming on their own in the last five years or so!

The post This semi-amphibious bus is a capable rescue vehicle for city flooding scenarios first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Polestar ‘Trambus’ concept is a road/rail hybrid designed to make public transport modular

Just like a train adds extra carriages when it’s running on high-capacity, the Polestar Trambus can expand in length to allow more passengers during an exceptionally busy day.

The idea for the Trambus comes from Seoul-based transportation design student Junghyun Kim, who developed the design as an entry into the 2021 Polestar Design Contest. Instead of putting more buses on the road during rush hour, Kim envisioned a modular bus system that could just allow you to expand a single existing bus by joining more buses to it, creating a road-rail hybrid that allowed you to transport people in an organized manner.

The buses operate autonomously, which makes them perfect for creating a modular system. The Trambus operates either as independent buses that house 25 passengers or as an interconnected set of 2 or 3 buses with a capacity of 50 or 75 passengers respectively. Each module is connected to another using a flexible bellow-shaped channel – quite like the one found on trains, although it’s unclear if passengers can move between carriages. The carriages are designed to be different on the insides too, with seated layouts for regular customers, table-layouts for long commutes or first-class customers, and empty carriages for people on wheelchairs or commuters with bicycles.

Designer: Junghyun Kim

This modular electric platform can pull any vehicle attached to it… like a futuristic horse

Building on perhaps one of the oldest modes of transportation, the U-Shift from DLR is an electric skateboard of sorts that plugs into a variety of modules, becoming a part of them… like a horse attaching itself to a chariot. Equipped with a powerful electric drivetrain capable of great torque, the U-Shift can pull modules with humans or cargo, allowing it to serve multiple functions in one format.

While some laud it as the future of logistics (and it certainly might be), it has roots embedded in history dating millennia ago! Just the way a single horse could pull a cart, a chariot, or a caravan with humans + cargo, the U-Shift has the ability to pull anything it’s attached to. Designed to suit modern conditions (because we don’t really use horses anymore), the U-Shift is capable of traveling larger distances non-stop, and silently. The first DLR U-Shift prototype was presented at the Interim Conference of the Strategic Dialogue for the Automotive Sector at Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart last week. “We want to make tomorrow’s mobility more sustainable, effective, and convenient,” said Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, Baden-Württemberg Minister for Economic Affairs. “Entirely new products and business models can emerge from futuristic innovations such as the U-Shift vehicle concept.”

Currently, the U-Shift prototype is controlled remotely, but future iterations of the electric driveboard are likely to be fully autonomous. For now, DLR has demoed the U-Shift along with a standard cargo-capsule, capable of carrying 4 Euro-sized pallets of freight eight barred rolling cabinets, and a mini-bus passenger capsule, with enough space for comfortably seating 7 people.

Designer: DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft und Raumfahrt)

VW’s e-BULLI concepts shows how your classic van can become an EV

Recently, we've seen Volkswagen experiment with combining its old-school aesthetic and modern tech. Last summer, it showed off its Type 20 electric concept -- a 1962 Microbus crammed with tech and an electric motor instead of an engine. Thanks to a p...

Google’s Waze-like app for public transit hits five more cities

Last year, Google incubator Area 120 announced a public transit app that works in a similar way to Waze. Users of Pigeon report transit information to help others know if they're likely to face delays or other issues. Until now, it's only been availa...

Google Maps can predict how crowded your train or bus will be

Public transit is vital for countless people, but no one wants to be stuck on a subway train or bus that's jam-packed. To help you figure out how busy your ride is going to be, you'll soon see predictions to that end in Google Maps. Google is tapping...