Have you travelled to or from Schiphol before? If so, you've probably already stood on a moving walkway with your bags. And even if you know how it works, the combination of a fully loaded trolley on an automatic conveyor belt can sometimes cause difficulties in the rush of catching your flight. As we want to continuously improve the quality of our airport, we are currently testing whether artificial intelligence (AI) can help to improve moving walkway usage.
When you're in a hurry and trying to catch your almost departing flight with an overloaded baggage trolley and your passport and boarding pass in your hand, an accident on a moving walkway, ramp or escalator (or transport assets, as we also call them) is waiting to happen. Together with our partners, we are continuously looking for ways to further improve the quality of our airport. That's why we have started a pilot, in collaboration with supplier KONE and supported by contractor BAM, at a number of moving walkways in Terminal 3. We are investigating whether AI applications can ensure that our assets better adapt to the needs of the user. When the user needs a little more help, the system can, for example, give extra instructions, slow down the asset or even stop it. In the long term, the aim is for the software to also switch the asset back on when the situation allows. In this way, we ensure that our moving walkways, stairs and ramps are out of use less often.
Sometimes someone loses their balance and falls. An unpleasant start or end to your journey, of course. Detecting a fall sounds simple, but in practice it is more complicated than you might expect. Because how do you know if a fall has actually occurred or if a user is just bending down to pull up their socks? AI is not a magic box into which you throw something, and it then spits out a ready-made answer. You have to train it, and that is why it is important that we also understand what is happening.
What about privacy? Of course, that has been considered too. We do not process any personal data for this application, and we work with a specialist privacy company. This ensures that we are constantly complying with all laws and regulations.
Our ambition is to make Schiphol an increasingly autonomous airport. We therefore want to apply technological developments such as AI more often in the future. Imagine, for example, a lift that automatically goes to the next floor and where you indicate where you want to go with your feet using a projection on the ground. By adapting devices to the user, we make life easier for travellers and make the experience at Schiphol increasingly carefree.