As part of the Design Team, I am responsible for designing, developing, and fabricating the vehicle’s outer shell.
Official website: monocab-owl.de
Comprehensive
Design Concept
MonoCab
OWL is a futuristic mobility concept integrating new and sustainable materials
and composites with digital fabrication technologies. With a comprehensive user
interaction and experience, the MonoCab represents a new way of public
transportation, which is more adaptable to personal needs, simpler, more
individualized, intuitive, and, above all, more accessible to everyone.
Manifold
qualities
The concept of the MonoCab appears in manifold ways: simple and complex,
futuristic and sophisticated, dynamic and elegant. The vehicle is a
self-propelled, gyroscope-stabilized, and autonomous driving monorail vehicle
powered by electric motors. The cabins travel in both directions on one rail
(one rail for each direction), like a paternoster. The first demonstrators will
be tested in 2022.
Sustainable
Design
The MonoCab team sets a strong focus on alternative materials and
production methods. The cabin of the vehicle is made of natural fiber
composites (NFC). In addition to cork, which is used in the outer shell as a
stabilizer and damper, sustainable materials such as wood, recycled plastics,
cellulose, and natural textiles represent smart, modern, and warm interior
furnishings.
Shy but
intuitive: UI and UX
The interior as well as the communication of the MonoCab can be adapted
to the individual needs of its passengers via a specific user interaction
design. Thus, numerous configurations of a MonoCab are possible for
accommodating wheelchairs, bicycles (also cargo bikes), luggage, or even freight.
The communication with the vehicle in terms of displays, lighting, and audio,
can be customized, too. Information is conveyed according to the Universal
Design 2-senses principle and at the same time, it follows the idea of
Shy Technology.