image: Projet B.Bus team awarded by members of MIT Portugal Program, the University of Minho and the Municipality of Guimarães view more
Credit: Raquel Figueiredo
B. Bus won the first Guimarães Green Urban Challenge and introduced a new concept of buses for bike users. The contest took place on September 12th and signaled the DesignDAY 2016, an initiative promoted by the MIT Portugal Program, the University of Minho and the Municipality of Guimarães. B.Bus was awarded with a 1500€ prize and its implementation will now be assessed by the city of Guimarães.
The team B.Bus proposed a new method to transporte bikes inside buses which will allow residents of the surrounding villages of the Municipality of Guimarães to bring their bikes into the City area. The method presented may also be adapted to serve as a mobile bike rental station, an idea that earned the distinction of the jury consisting of members from the University of Minho and the Municipality of Guimarães. The proposal was developed by a multidisciplinary team which included Flávia Barbosa, mechanical engineer and student of the MIT Portugal PhD program in Engineering Design and Advanced Manufacturing (EDAM) at the University of Minho, Pedro Baptista an undergraduate student in Product Design from the University of Minho and Raquel Figueiredo an MIT Portugal PhD program student in Sustainable Energy System at Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa.
The competition was attended by 30 participants from the entire country with different profiles, from Undergraduate to PhD students, with training in engineering, architecture or design. The challenge presented a unique format since the contestant didn´t need to submit an idea or project when registering. During the day they were able to plan and design their projects in a specific environment that helped them bringing into life new concepts and creative solutions.
In addition to the winning project, two others were awarded with honorable mentions: Cycloud an innovative bicycle lock system with an integrated reward platform, was submitted by Luis Galamba de Carvalho, Nina Costa e Rita Rodrigues, from the MIT EDAM Doctoral program at the University of Porto;
"Bicla do Rei" consists on an integrated mobility platform for the Guimarães region and was developed by Ahmad Alshaghel, Sophia Moraes e Diogo Cunha postgraduate students from the University of Minho in Materials Engineering, Ergonomy and Technology and Digital Art.
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The DesignDAY is an initiative that aims to create a platform of emerging ideas that will be evaluated and possibly adopted by the Municipality of Guimarães to contribute to a more sustainable and efficient development. This first edition was dedicated to the urban mobility sector, regarding the City´s upcoming application process to the European Green Capital 2020. Urban mobility and the development of sustainable solutions in the transportation sector remain a huge challenge for modern cities. The continuous growth of population in Cities, the non-sustainable development of transportation systems and the increasing number of automobiles, are a serious environmental, social and economic issue.