Testing an Autonomous Baggage Vehicle
Being a major airport hub, a large number of passengers arrive at and leave from Schiphol each day. Many of these passengers bring a checked bag. Processing all this baggage is a complex logistical challenge, particularly in the early morning when travelers are transferring. Some of these travelers have a transfer time as short as 40 minutes, while other passengers have multiple hours to get to the next flight. This morning peak puts pressure on both baggage handlers, equipment and the baggage system. Therefore, Schiphol and KLM are conducting a proof of concept (PoC) with an electric self-driving baggage vehicle from supplier Aurrigo, the Auto-DollyTug. This vehicle will separate the baggage of passengers with long transfer times from those with short transfer times. With this PoC both Schiphol and KLM are exploring the potential of setting up a process which ensures more efficiency, as well as exploring the potential of autonomous technologies for transporting baggage containers.
Hot-cold separation
Pieces of baggage from transfer passengers are classified as ‘hot’ (short transfer time) and ‘cold’ (long transfer time). The concept of hot-cold separation revolves around separating hot (short transfer time) from cold baggage (long transfer time). This separation happens at the airplane, where pre-batched containers filled with cold baggage are separated from the stream of the ‘ordinary’ baggage containers. The pre-batching of these containers has already been done at the departing airport. At Schiphol, these ‘cold’ containers are picked up by the autonomous baggage tug and transported to a specific buffer area on site. This buffer area is placed at a convenient location, in order to minimize transport times and vehicle movement. After buffering these containers for a set period of time, they are picked up and brought to the baggage hall, again by the autonomous baggage tug.
The proof of concept aims to provide insight into the feasibility of this concept and aims to uncover potential complexities
Autonomous Baggage Transport and Buffering
A process like hot-cold separation could also be done manually. However, due to the nature of this process, this would require a significant amount of additional equipment and staff. Therefore, both KLM and Schiphol see value in exploring autonomous vehicles to facilitate this process. The aim of testing the vehicle of Aurrigo is to assess whether the vehicle can autonomously pick up, transport and drop off a fully loaded baggage container in a safe and efficient manner.
The vehicle is equipped with numerous safety measures such as Lidars and cameras in order to be able to operate safely. During the testing period, two safety operators will always be present in the vehicle while driving, in case of emergency.
In order to validate the set hypotheses, Schiphol, KLM and Aurrigo have agreed on a partnership of one year in which the vehicle will be deployed at Schiphol airside. This year of testing has been split up into phases which build up the complexity of the application. Starting with driving a limited route both outside as well as in the baggage hall, slowly increasing the number of routes and finally also testing on the aircraft stand.
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