In the modern world we were already on the path to social isolation, even on public transport. Headphones and earphones, low looks, zero dialogue. With the era of individual autonomous transport, journeys risk becoming a vast space of solitude.
How to find a compromise between the fact that we will travel in single autonomous cabins and the need for social interaction? Concept Bubble is not a simple autonomous vehicle: it is a visionary project that explores alternatives.
Concept Bubble, the autonomous vehicle becomes a hive
A future in which autonomous vehicles are designed in such a way that they can also join together in formation to connect individual passengers is possible, at least in theory, with the advent of artificial intelligence to manage routes.
The designer's Concept Bubble Chuan Jiang brings us closer to that future, with the aim of breaking social barriers and transforming as many of today's vehicle-focused road spaces as human spaces.
The concept provides many insights, and makes even more sense in anticipation of an environment in which automotive manufacturers shift focus to mobility services.
Like soap bubbles
Concept Bubble represents the idea itself. The designer was inspired by the observation of a promiscuous material. A foam, to be precise: soap bubbles, separated from each other, merge by sharing one or more sides. It is the principle behind this bidirectional autonomous vehicle: it can move on its own, but if necessary it also merges with others, and it can do so by criterion. For example, filter people who go to the same place (or share a sufficient stretch of road) and want to talk about the same topic, or have similar interests.
In the era of autonomous transport, which is imagined as real mobile rooms, Concept Bubble is designed to envelop the passenger in complete comfort. A relaxed riding position and padded seat that moves 360 degrees offer great flexibility in social interactions with other passengers.
The autonomous pod is networked to all the other “Bubble riders”. They are part of a fleet, but they are also an entire social network that moves.
A frontier vision that makes us reflect on all the possible configurations that "liquid" space and time will place before us, in an almost inextricable melange of physical and digital.
