AI photo booth at the Tram World Championship 2025: the TSA logo on a superhero's chest
In short: At the first Tramdriver World Championship on Vienna's Rathausplatz, our AI photo booth stood at the stand of Traktionssysteme Austria. Guests were turned into superheroes by AI – and the emblem on the chest was not a generic one, it was the TSA logo. We were booked by the agency Eventmanagement Heinreichsberger.
What is an AI photo booth?
An AI photo booth does not filter the picture it takes, it recomputes it. The guest's photo becomes an image of its own: the same face, but a completely different picture – a comic style, a movie poster, or in this case a superhero portrait.
The difference to a green screen is fundamental. A green screen cuts the person out and places them in front of a backdrop; you can see the edge. An AI photo booth generates the entire image, light, fabric, shadow and surroundings included. The result does not look pasted together – it looks like a photograph that never happened.
The occasion: the first Tramdriver World Championship in Vienna
On 13 September 2025, Vienna's Rathausplatz turned into a competition ground for tram drivers. Twenty-five teams from 25 nations competed in eight disciplines, from precision braking to tram bowling, for ten hours and with free admission.
The home team won: Elisabeth Urbanitsch and Florijan Isaku of Wiener Linien took the title with 5,599 points, ahead of Poland and Norway. Around the competition ran a public festival with stands, a programme and tens of thousands of visitors.
For companies in the rail industry, that was the opportunity of the year: a specialist subject that normally draws nobody into the street, with an audience that turned up voluntarily.
The brief: make an invisible supplier visible
TSA builds traction motors, generators and gearboxes for rail vehicles – for more than 60 years, from its site in Wiener Neudorf, for customers worldwide. Many of the trams running along the Ring that day had TSA technology inside them.
And that is precisely a supplier's communication problem: the product sits in the bogie, under the floor, behind panelling. Nobody sees it. So the stand had a model of a traction motor on display to touch – but a motor on a table does not explain itself to a family audience.
The agency's task was therefore to give the logo a place where it could not be overlooked.
The solution: the logo moves to the chest
AI turned every guest into a superhero – dark blue suit, red cape, skyline in the evening light. And right in the middle of the chest, where a superhero emblem traditionally sits, was the TSA logo with the words "Traktionssysteme Austria".
That is the whole trick, and it works for three reasons:
The logo is the hero, not the decoration. A logo at the edge of a picture gets looked past. A logo as a chest emblem is the centre of the image – you cannot look at the picture without reading it.
The image gets shared voluntarily. Nobody shares an advert. A picture of yourself as a superhero is shared by almost everyone. The logo travels along without anyone experiencing it as advertising.
The way back is built in. Top right on the print sits a QR code pointing to www.tsa.at. Anyone who wants to know what is behind the emblem needs exactly one gesture.
Why an AI photo booth pulls harder at a trade fair than a prize wheel
The stand had both: a prize wheel and the photo booth. Both attract people, but they do different things.
The prize wheel creates a brief moment and a giveaway. The AI photo booth creates an image the guest appears in – and pictures like that do not get thrown away. The stand visit lasts longer, because waiting for the result is part of the experience, and that wait is time to talk. This is exactly where stand staff earn their keep: someone standing for two minutes will also listen when you explain what actually drives a tram.
The third point is the instant print. The finished image comes out of the printer, and the prints stood visibly on a display next to the booth. That is the best advertising the station can have: passers-by see straight away what comes out here, and join the queue.
Setting up in the open air
The stand was an open tent on Rathausplatz. For a photo station that means shifting daylight, wind, foot traffic in both directions and no wall to lean on.
So we work with our own shooting light rather than ambient light, so that a picture taken at ten in the morning looks like one taken at six in the evening. For the AI processing we bring our own internet over 5G – on a square with tens of thousands of people, mobile networks cannot be relied on. The station needs level ground and power at the stand; everything else, from the barrier to the print display, comes from us.
For your next trade fair or sponsorship activation
Want to be taken home from a trade fair or a sponsorship rather than merely seen? The AI photo booth puts your logo where it cannot be missed inside the image, and sends it onward on your visitors' phones. We develop the motif to match your brand – from superhero to movie-poster styling. More devices from the same range are in our AI Line.
FAQ: AI photo booths at trade fairs and events
What separates an AI photo booth from a normal photo booth?
A normal photo booth delivers the photo, possibly with a frame and a filter. An AI photo booth computes a new image from that photo: same face, entirely different scene. Guests recognise themselves, but they are standing in a world that never existed.
Can our logo be built into the AI motif?
Yes, and that is the lever. On this job the logo sat as an emblem on the superhero's chest – at the centre of the image rather than at its edge. Logos on jerseys, vehicles, signs or buildings inside the motif are equally possible.
How long does one picture take?
AI processing and printing together take a few minutes. That wait is not a drawback but the opportunity for a conversation at the stand.
Does an AI photo booth work outdoors?
Yes. We bring our own shooting light so results look the same regardless of daylight, and our own internet over 5G for the image processing. What we need is level ground, power and a covered stand position.
Do guests get the picture digitally or printed?
Both are possible. At the Tram World Championship it was printed on the spot, and a QR code in the layout led straight to the client's website.
Does this also suit B2B subjects that are hard to explain?
Especially those. The more explanation a product needs, the more valuable an image people look at and pass on voluntarily – and the more the time a guest spends at your stand is worth.
