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 booth of Traktionssysteme Austria. Guests were turned into superheroes by AI – and on their chest sat not just any emblem, but the TSA logo. We were commissioned by the agency Eventmanagement Heinreichsberger.
What is an AI photo booth?
An AI photo booth is a photo booth that doesn't just filter the captured image but recomputes it. The guest's photo becomes a standalone image: the same face, but a completely different picture – a comic style, a movie poster, or, in this case, a superhero portrait.
The difference from a green screen is fundamental. With a green screen, the person is cut out and placed in front of a background; you can see the edge. With the AI photo booth, the entire image is newly generated, including light, fabric, shadows and surroundings. The result doesn't look pasted together, but like a photo that never existed.
The occasion: the first Tramdriver World Championship in Vienna
On September 13, 2025, Vienna's Rathausplatz turned into a competition ground for tram drivers. 25 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. All around it ran a public festival with booths, a stage program and tens of thousands of visitors.
For companies in the rail industry, this was the opportunity of the year: a specialist topic that otherwise draws nobody onto the street, with an audience that comes voluntarily.
The task: making an invisible supplier visible
TSA builds traction motors, generators and gearboxes for rail vehicles – for over 60 years, from its site in Wiener Neudorf, for customers all over the world. Many of the trams running along the Ring that day had TSA technology inside.
But that is precisely a supplier's communication problem: the product sits in the bogie, under the floor, behind panels. Nobody sees it. So the booth featured a model of a traction motor you could touch – but a motor on a table doesn't explain itself to a family audience.
The agency's task, then, was to give the logo a place where it couldn't be overlooked.
The solution: the logo moves onto the chest
AI turned every guest into a superhero – dark blue suit, red cape, skyline in evening light. And right in the middle of the chest, where superheroes traditionally wear their emblem, sat the TSA logo together with the wordmark "Traktionssysteme Austria".
That's the whole trick, and it works for three reasons:
The logo is the hero, not the decoration. A logo at the edge of the picture gets ignored. A logo as a chest emblem is the center of the image – you can't look at it without reading it.
The picture gets shared voluntarily. Nobody shares an ad. A picture that shows you as a superhero, almost everybody shares. The logo travels along without anyone perceiving it as advertising.
The way back is built in. In the top right of the print sits a QR code with the address www.tsa.at. Anyone who wants to know what's behind the emblem needs exactly one hand movement.
Why an AI photo booth pulls better at a trade show than a prize wheel
The booth 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 a picture the guest appears in – and such pictures don't get thrown away. The booth visit lasts longer because waiting for the result is part of the experience, and that waiting time is when conversations happen. That is exactly where booth staff work begins: someone who stands there for two minutes also listens when somebody explains what actually powers a tram.
The third point is the instant print. The finished image comes out of the printer as a print, and the printed pictures were on display next to the booth. That is the best advertising for the station itself: passersby see immediately what comes out of it and get in line.
Setup under the open sky
The booth was an open tent on Rathausplatz. For a photo station, that means changing daylight, wind, foot traffic in both directions and no wall to lean against.
That's why we work with our own capture lighting instead of ambient light, so a picture at ten in the morning looks exactly like one at six in the evening. For the AI processing we bring our own internet via 5G – on a square with tens of thousands of people, cell service can't be relied on otherwise. And the station needs level ground and a power supply at the booth; everything else, from the barrier to the printer stand, comes from us.
For your next trade show or sponsorship activation
Want to be not just seen but taken home at a trade show or a sponsorship? The AI Photo Booth puts your logo where it can't be missed in the picture and sends it onward on your visitors' phones. We develop the motif to match your brand – from superhero to movie-poster look. You'll find more devices from the same range in our AI Line.
FAQ: AI photo booth at trade shows and events
What sets an AI photo booth apart from a regular photo booth?
A regular photo booth delivers the photo, possibly with a frame and filter. An AI photo booth computes a new image from the photo: same face, completely different scene. Guests recognize themselves, but they're standing in a world that never existed.
Can our logo be built into the AI motif?
Yes, and that is exactly the lever. For this job, the logo sat as an emblem on the superhero's chest – in the center of the image instead of at the edge. Logos on jerseys, vehicles, signs or buildings within the motif are also possible.
How long does one picture take?
AI processing and printing together take a few minutes. That waiting time is not a drawback but the opportunity for a conversation at the booth.
Does the AI photo booth also work outdoors?
Yes. We bring our own capture lighting so results look the same regardless of daylight, and our own internet via 5G for the image processing. What's needed is level ground, a power connection and a covered spot.
Do guests get the picture digitally or printed?
Both are possible. At the Tram World Championship, prints were made instantly, and a QR code in the layout also led directly to the client's website.
Is this suitable for B2B topics that are hard to explain?
Especially for those. The more a product needs explaining, the more valuable a picture is that people voluntarily look at and pass on – and the more the time a guest spends at the booth because of it counts.
