A Toronto-based design atelier called Aprilli has designed a concept of an autonomous and mobile hotel room called Autonomous Travel Suite (ATS).
Designed to be a compact hotel environment that offers direct transportation and hospitality between the traveller’s home and final destination, each suite is equipped with sleeping, working, and washroom facilities. Created for six to 12-hour journeys, these suites feature panoramic windows that offer a view of the surroundings and a dimming switch for sleeping.
“Autonomous Travel Suite is a new form of hospitality merging transportation and hotel into one form, offering flexible travel schedules, lower costs, privacy, and, above all, comfort,” said Aprilli in a statement.
Measuring 19 by 8 feet, approximately the footprint of a minivan, there are also plans to incorporate double and family units to accommodate a wider range of travellers.
The suites will be controlled by Autonomous Interface, a central platform that can be downloaded as an app and used to manage the destination and services of the ride. Once requested, the suite will be delivered directly to the traveller’s front door at their specified time with all the information about best routes and nearby facilities downloaded onto the interface.
While in transit, the Autonomous Interface will also monitor the indoor environment and vehicle status to ensure an optimal condition.
A network of hotel facilities called Autonomous Hotel Chain will also be scattered across on-route cities to act as parent units for the travel suites. The compact suite can either park at one of these structures so the traveller can use a gym, meeting room or pool on the way to their destinations, and or dock into an upscale unit for longer overnight stays. Fresh batteries, waste removal and vehicle maintenance will also be offered at these static facilities.
Aprilli is currently planning a start-up business to begin integrating this technology into existing structures. “It will be a group of add-on villa-type hotel rooms specifically designed to host Autonomous Vehicles,” told Steve Lee, the brainchild of ATS, to Setting Mind in an email. “These will be added on to existing hotel properties for the initial phase, so it can share the public amenities with the existing conventional hotel. The Autonomous hotel portion will grow larger as the proportion of Autonomous vehicle numbers grow.”
By reducing waiting time and transfer procedures from planes to rental cars to hotel rooms, these travel suites offer a more efficient and customizable option for inter-city travellers. According to the current plan, ATS will be coming to the east and west coasts of the United States by 2025.
To learn more about Autonomous Travel Suite, click the link below.
