Overview
The worlds' 50 most popular airports host approximately 30 to 100 million passengers each year, meaning there's an average of 82,000 to 274,000 passengers per day passing through the airport, and over 1000 planes landing and departing through the tarmacs.
It's no wonder that airports around the world have been putting their foot down on automation with automated check-in counters, facial recognition Custom software with e-passports, auto luggage check-in services, etc. to cope with the ever-increasing number of passengers.
Tremendous efforts have been placed into automating checking in passengers such as self check-in counters that are like stationary KIOSKS. It's connected to a wider network, capable of interacting with patrons through scanners and display monitors. Then comes automated luggage handling system that gets the checked-in luggages from the counter to the appropriate gate/ terminal to be loaded onto the corresponding departing aircraft, or vice versa.
Before and after this point, the delivery method has always been man-driven vehicles to load and unload onto/ off aircrafts. Now the challenge is not so much the loading/ unloading, but the process of getting the mass volume of luggages to and from aircrafts. With limited drivers driving luggage towing vehicles, luggage loading/ unloading is one of the most common delays you see at airports.
Challenges
To solve this issue, our solution integrator partner developed an autonomous luggage towing vehicle. The vehicle requires a computer that can connect to cameras and sensors, rugged powerful, and yet compact enough to fit into the towing vehicle.
Some of the tougher challenges are the operating environment the computer system must endure in the vehicle. With several hundreds of flights coming in and out of airports, the towing vehicle will be on the move (constantly subject to shock and vibration), terminal to aircraft, and vice versa to load and unload luggages.
In addition, the support for wireless communication is vital as it needs to connect to the airport network to know when and where to pick up and deliver the luggages. Last but not least, being installed onto a specialized vehicle, it will be confined to limited spaces that will have dramatic effect on its operating temperatures.
Solution
Our partner chose Neousys Nuvo rugged embedded computers, renowned for AGV, AMR, and various autonomous vehicle platforms, the systems feature in-vehicle and rolling stock certifications to guarantee specific environment and in-vehicle operation compatibility, specifically constant vibration and shock.
Other configurations include wireless module expansion capabilities for WiFi, 5G, LTE, GPS, etc. to provide the system with wireless communication. This not only allows the vehicles to connect to the airport network but also monitor and operate as a fleet. The connected central system can schedule/ prioritize vehicles for luggage pick up/ drop off; monitor the vehicles for faults (predictive maintenance), and distribute workloads amongst vehicles to minimize wear and tear.
Last but not least, the vehicle's autonomy ability requires connectivity to multiple cameras and sensors. The ability to see and to detect in-path obstacles allow the vehicle to mauver accordingly to and from the terminal and aircraft.
The Nuvo rugged series systems come with rich I/Os and some feature the ability to add on function-specific ports via PCIe cards in Neousys patented Cassette module to accommodate connections for extra devices.
