Credit: Changi Airport Group

Changi Airport Group (CAG) has deployed its first fleet of fully driverless autonomous tractors in live airside operations at Singapore Changi Airport (SIN), marking a major milestone in the airport’s automation and innovation journey.

Following nearly a year of trials involving more than 5,000 test trips, two autonomous tractors are now transporting passenger baggage between the baggage handling areas of Terminal 1 and Terminal 4. The launch, officiated by Ms Sun Xueling, Senior Minister of State for Transport, highlights Singapore’s continued commitment to pioneering smart airport technologies.

Each autonomous tractor is equipped with more than 10 sensors and cameras that enable safe navigation in the complex airside environment, operating reliably during daytime, nighttime and adverse weather conditions. The vehicles are monitored in real time from a dedicated control centre, where remote operators can intervene immediately should human assistance be require

The deployment represents a significant step forward in Changi Airport’s “airside of the future” vision, enhancing safety, reliability and manpower productivity. By removing the need for drivers, airside workers are freed from routine driving tasks and can instead focus on last mile operations, which remain more challenging to automate.

Later this year, another six autonomous tractors will be deployed along a different route between Terminal 2’s baggage handling area and aircraft stands as part of a collaboration between CAG and SATS. By 2027, the autonomous tractor fleet is expected to expand to 24 vehicles. Future deployments will also see the tractors used to tow cargo and airside equipment, in addition to baggage.

The project is co-funded by the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) and forms part of Changi Airport’s wider innovation strategy. This includes the use of artificial intelligence in initiatives such as “Aircraft 360”, as well as automation and robotics to improve operational efficiency and workforce productivity.

To ensure safe integration with human-driven vehicles and personnel, dedicated autonomous vehicle zones have been marked across the airside, and all autonomous tractors carry clear identification labels.

Ms Liu Yanling, CAG’s Senior Vice President for Airport Operations Strategy and Transformation, said: “The operationalisation of our autonomous tractors represents a huge step forward as we move towards our vision of the airside of the future. By redesigning work processes and infrastructure, we are creating a future-proofed environment where autonomous vehicles and human workers operate seamlessly.”

Ms Angela Ng, Director of Aviation Industry at CAAS, noted that up to 30% of Singapore’s aviation workforce could experience job redesign over the next five years. “The scaled deployment of autonomous tractors allows stakeholders to develop new systems and job transformation programmes, helping workers transition to higher-value roles,” she said.

Mr Kuah Boon Kiam, Senior Vice President of SATS Apron Services, added that the initiative supports SATS’ Hub Handler of the Future programme, improving safety, turnaround efficiency and service quality, while delivering more reliable baggage handling and on-time departures for passengers.

Source : https://tinyurl.com/airportbenchmarking

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Royal Schiphol Group continues its investment in innovation, technology and new solutions to create smart, future-proof ground handling processes. Ahead of her presentation at the upcoming FTE APEX Virtual Expo, taking place on 25-26 May, Rosina Kotey, Innovation Lead, Royal Schiphol Group, spoke to FTE about the airport group’s new vision to operate fully autonomous and sustainable airports by 2050.

“An innovation mindset is crucial”

Royal Schiphol Group’s innovation approach is based upon McKinsey’s Three Horizons Model, which the airport group calls “earth, moon and mars” innovations. Kotey describes the ‘earth’ model as the incremental innovation which addresses day-to-day challenges; ‘moon’ defines transformational innovation and more fundamental changes to the workings of existing value chains; while ‘mars’ as a more disruptive innovation, which sees the introduction of new value chains and operating models. “Schiphol’s innovation department orchestrates all innovation for the entire group and focuses on exploring moon and mars innovations, whereas earth innovations are driven by the rest of the organisation of Royal Schiphol Group,” she explains.

“An innovation mindset is crucial, which is not only having the ability to have novel ideas but being completely comfortable with dealing with not knowing the outcome at the start, seeing failure as an imperative part of growth and progress. Not being afraid to say I don’t know the answer… yet! But always being eager to investigate, research, experiment in order to find out what the answer is. We call it having a “Rockstar” mentality!”

A fully autonomous airport by 2050

Deriving from the ‘moon’ and ‘mars’ innovation philosophies, Royal Schiphol Group has laid out a future-looking vision to create a fully autonomous airport by 2050. In line with these ambitions, in February the airport group launched its new ‘Autonomous Airside Operations’ programme, which will see all airside vehicles be replaced by an interconnected fleet of autonomous, emission-free vehicles and all associated processes will be automated.

Kotey explains: “We identified several building blocks and themes and initiatives that we need to focus on to achieve our ambition. We are now building the roadmap towards a fully autonomous airside operation in 2050. A main part of how we build towards the future is by researching and experimenting. We take a stage gated approach in order to de-risk and validate the assumptions we have.”

Creating such a vision for the future and successfully implementing it is, of course, a massive undertaking for any organisation. Kotey tells FTE that her team has approached the challenge by breaking it down into three key tracks – hardware, intelligence, and transformation.

The hardware track, she explains, focuses on technology such as robotics, drones and autonomous assets and vehicles, in order to build a more sustainable and zero emission ground operation. An autonomous operation needs data and intelligence at the base of its operation, so the intelligence track utilises elements such as real-time data insights, adaptive routing, integral planning and forecasting and supporting infrastructure. “This intelligent structure consists of multiple layers that interact and build on each other. Prioritisation, planning and executing tasks according to the most important KPI’s, looking for the most optimised way to operate at all times depending on the situation at hand. All the Intelligence themes and initiatives have a focus on data, artificial intelligence and machine learning.”

However, to make the transition from the current state of operations towards a fully autonomous airside operations, Kotey says, there is still a lot that needs to be defined. “Many new processes need to be developed in a step change approach, while working towards a completely new operational reality. While the ambition for an autonomous airside is clear, many organisational aspects remain uncertain. We need to develop an integration strategy and an agile implementation plan that takes things such as the human factor in relation to autonomous technology, the required change in the internal and external stakeholder landscape, but also liability and legislation into account.”

Trials of autonomous vehicles and sustainable taxiing

Since the inception of the ‘Autonomous Airside Operations’ programme, Royal Schiphol Group’s ambitious vision has started to materialise in a series of trials and feasibility studies.

A more notable example is a recent project launched in partnership with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines’ ground handling department, which observed how an autonomous baggage tractor can take baggage to the aircraft on the apron at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. The aim of the trial was to discover whether the technology is safe and efficient and how self-driving vehicles can be integrated with other traffic at the airport. Sharing some of the findings of the pilot, Kotey says: “In the entire month of February, we did over 200 missions under many different circumstances. We had snowfall, rain, heavy wind, and clear sunny days in which we operated. This gave us the opportunity to experience the behaviour of the “TractEasy” in these different weather circumstances. We are working on a report on the findings of the trial, but a key finding that we can already share is that although we feel the technology needs some maturing, we still see opportunities to start with implementation of autonomous vehicles on a very small scale in low traffic areas. We will continue to investigate use cases that might be suited for such implementation.” Indeed, Rotterdam The Hague and Eindhoven airports are also expected to start testing autonomous baggage tractors this spring.

In another recent trial, Royal Schiphol Group explored the feasibility of sustainable taxiing. During the trial, aircrafts were brought to the runway by a special tow vehicle, also known as the “taxibot”. The vehicle is powered by a hybrid combination of electric and diesel engines and taxiing with the use of the “taxibot”consumes at least 50% less fuel aircraft engines would normally use while taxiing. The trial was conducted in partnership with a large ecosystem of partners, including Schiphol Airport, Air Traffic Control the Netherlands, the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, Corendon Dutch Airlines, KLM, Transavia, easyJet, and the airline handlers dnata and KLM Ground Services.

Indeed, Kotey points out that close cooperation with all airport partners is instrumental in helping Royal Schiphol Group achieve its vision. “Working together with several different airlines and ground handlers together with the Dutch Air Traffic Control is a fantastic opportunity to have all viewpoints and expertise at the same table. I think the saying “If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together” says it all. To make a system change possible it is imperative to work together. We are incredibly pleased to have the involvement of our sector partners and invite others to join as well. We “the sector partners” have recently started working on the roadmap for sustainable taxiing as standard procedure at Schiphol Airport towards 2030.”

Emission-free airports by 2030

Creating a more sustainable future is at the epicentre of the company’s overall vision. “We want our airports to be the most sustainable in the world,” says Kotey. “That is why we have drawn up a route plan. It contains a number of concrete steps that will make our airports emission-free by 2030, for example with electric vehicles, sustainable energy and use energy efficiently, and sustainable taxiing.”

While the outlook for the coming years remains uncertain, it is clear that Royal Schiphol Group is on the right track to achieving its ambitious vision to build back better in a more sustainable way and lead the industry by example.

source : https://www.futuretravelexperience.com/2021/03/royal-schiphol-group-building-a-roadmap-towards-a-fully-autonomous-airside-operation-in-2050/?utm_source=Future+Travel+Experience+News&utm_campaign=c4fda19078-fte_nl_250321&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e5a8fdd64e-c4fda19078-91968948

the RGIA has always been keen on adopting new and improved practices to enhance operations at the airport. The eco-friendly and technologically-advanced Runway Preservation is a testimony to this

Transport Call, launched on 6 October, which made €290 million available for co-funding, with a specific focus on accelerating the renewal and updating of European airports’ Air Traffic Control (ATC) infrastructure. What is so remarkable about this? Luc Laveyne reports.

“This unique partnership has allowed the 4th biggest UK airport, which is now at record passenger numbers and continuing to grow, to introduce vehicle transponders within the airside environment, which are part of a suite of safety-focused Pilot Common Project (PCP) deployments.” (Monika Simonaityte, Stansted Airport)

The SESAR Deployment Airport Grouping (SDAG, part of ACI EUROPE) has been working hard to highlight funding opportunities to airports. In recent times, it has noticed that this is having an impact, with an increasing awareness and interest by European airports in obtaining public funding for their Air Traffic Management (ATM)-related investments in the past months. It is very interesting to see the growing number of multi-stakeholder projects presented. For example, one multi-stakeholder’s project proposal “Synchronised stakeholder decision on process optimisation at airport level”, addressing one of the European Commission’s priorities for this call, has been coordinated by Brussels Airport with the support of SDAG. The joint application aims at improving the efficiency of airside operations through real-time information sharing. It sees the involvement of 13 airport operators, 2 ANSPs and 1 Airspace User with an indicative budget of €90m of investment. The proposal currently has the endorsement of the involved Member States and will be submitted for the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA)’s evaluation at the beginning of April 2018.
In parallel, another project – “Enablers for Airport Surface Movement related to Safety Net” is already being executed. This project is a multi-stakeholder project (12 Airport Operators, 1 ANSP and 1 Airspace User) awarded by INEA for its co-funding through the 2016 CEF Call and coordinated by Groupe ADP with SDAG support. It aims at synchronised deployment of the Advanced-Surface Movement Guidance and Control System (A-SMGCS) throughout Europe – a system that provides guidance and surveillance for the control of aircraft and vehicles in order to maintain airport throughput under all weather conditions, while keeping the required level of safety.

In particular, Stansted Airport, one of the project contributors, has already successfully implemented its part of the project last summer. “This unique partnership has allowed the 4th biggest UK airport, which is now at record passenger numbers and continuing to grow, to introduce vehicle transponders within the airside environment, which are part of a suite of safety-focused Pilot Common Project (PCP) deployments. The objective of the project was to equip airside vehicles that have access to the runway and operate in the manoeuvring area of London Stansted Airport with a vehicle transponder, to improve situational awareness, reduce the risk of runway incursions and contribute to the overall airport safety culture. London Stansted Airport will continue to collaborate with European stakeholders to introduce other such technological and operational solutions that will not only facilitate the airport’s growth efficiently and safely, but also effectively play a vital role in a coordinated European Air Traffic Management network. The INEA funding as part of this joint project has expedited the implementation of this and other PCP mandated projects here at Stansted” (Monika Simonaityte, Stansted Airport).
These two experiences are a clear proof that airport operators are currently leading the way in terms of presenting joint applications. What it also shows is that they are supporting the coordinated and synchronised execution of their implementation projects to enhance the ATM modernisation, thus complying with the obligations stemming from the Pilot Common Project Regulation. However, since CEF initiatives do not always fully correspond to different airports’ needs, SDAG’s priority for the next months is to explore other forms of funding (mainly on the basis of the investment plans) and to better understand airports’ needs, in order to foster alignment with the policy plans of the European Commission.
Let SDAG know what your airport’s plans and needs are for the next years (in terms of investments, innovations, etc.) so that SDAG can explore the possibilities of different funding initiatives.
SDAG is open to questions for clarification and potential investigation. You can visit the SDAG website (www.aci-europe.org/sdag.html) and contact SDAG on the following email addresses: barbora.smolikova@airportgrouping.org and luc.laveyne@aci-europe.org.

source : https://tinyurl.com/y8rsv95b

New Zealand’s busiest airport will begin experimenting with digital tower technology,

joining a handful of other airports around the world testing how they might benefit from the system.

A prototype digital air traffic control is being trialled at Auckland International Airport. Airways New Zealand, the county’s only air navigation service provider, announced today that it had partnered with technology firm Frequentis to engineer the technology.

The demonstration prototype will be used to assess how digital towers could increase aviation safety and extend hours of air services in more regional locations, enhance resilience and improve traffic flows in bad weather.

Airways Chief Operating Officer Pauline Lamb said digital towers are a viable alternative to bricks and mortar air traffic control towers that have the potential to improve safety through greatly improved aircraft tracking ability and enhanced visual images.

“For example, cameras can automatically zoom in and track objects that are fast moving or otherwise hard to see, such as birds which are a serious hazard to aircraft. In low light or bad weather, infrared would provide controllers with heightened visibility.”
Digital towers present controllers with a huge amount of information and panoramic views of an airfield in more detail than is possible to see with the human eye.
This vision is enhanced with surveillance sensors and microphones. Augmented reality overlays mean controllers will be able to see additional flight data collected via radar like aircraft speed, separation between aircraft and airfield information.

“Digital towers are one of the intelligent transport technologies we are looking at to modernise our air traffic network and ensure New Zealand gets the most benefit out of an increasingly complex and busy airspace,” Ms Lamb added. “In future digital towers could support greater air connectivity, by giving us the option to extend services in areas of New Zealand where the costs of building or servicing a physical tower are currently not cost effective.”

The most recent estimates suggest that demand for air transport in New Zealand will increase by an average of 4.3 per cent each year over the next 20 years. And, with the arrival of UAVs, rockets and other new entrants into New Zealand skies, the demand for air traffic management services is increasing.
The prototype tower is not being used to manage live traffic. In the first instance Airways is exploring digital towers to see how the technology could be used as a contingency option to back-up to physical towers.
Digital tower technology is gaining a foothold internationally. Systems are currently being tested at Changi and London City Airports, and rolled out across Sweden and Norway.

source : https://tinyurl.com/y8l3elbp

Covered in this report
The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global commercial airport lighting market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the sales of traditional lighting and LED lighting to airport construction contractors. It also considers the revenue generated through the sales of lighting solutions in the replacement market.

read more if interested : https://tinyurl.com/yagut7xj

RWSL is a fully automatic, autonomous and safety advisory
high-technology system designed to prevent aircrews and vehicle drivers from runway incursions, or to reduce their severity. These visual aids come as a complement to the compulsory ATC clearances for runway penetration, and other existing means on the platform (wig wags, “RWY AHEAD” markings, stop bars in LVP conditions).

This film was made by Groupe ADP and the DSNA with the participation of Air France . RWSL at Paris-CDG has been co-financed by the European Union (Connecting Europe
Facility).

London City Airport has announced it is to become the first UK airport to build and operate a digital air traffic control tower, with a multi-million pound investment in the technology. Working closely with UK air traffic provider NATS, London City Airport has approved plans for a new tower, at the top of which will be 14 High Definition cameras and two pan-tilt-zoom cameras. The cameras will provide a full 360 degree view of the airfield in a level of detail greater than the human eye and with new viewing tools that will modernise and improve air traffic management.

The images of the airfield and data will be sent via independent and secure super-fast fibre networks to a brand new operations room at the NATS control centre in Swanwick, Hampshire. From Swanwick, air traffic controllers will perform their operational role, using the live footage displayed on 14 HD screens that form a seamless panoramic moving image, alongside the audio feed from the airfield, and radar readings from the skies above London, to instruct aircraft and oversee movements.

Declan Collier, CEO at London City Airport, said: “A pioneering new digital air traffic control system will enhance safety and improve resilience, setting a new standard for the global aviation industry to follow.

“With London City Airport’s plans to grow and an existing tower which is reaching the end of its operational lifespan, this cutting edge proven technology future-proofs London City Airport’s air traffic control for the next 30 years and beyond.”

The technology from Saab Digital Air Traffic Solutions, which is tried and tested and already in use at Örnsköldsvik and Sundsvall airports in Sweden.

The 50-metre digital tower was approved by the London Borough of Newham in December 2016, and construction will begin later this year, located in the airport’s long-stay car park, in line with the mid-way point of the runway, adjacent to King George V Dock.

Construction of the tower is due to be completed in 2018, followed by more than a year of rigorous testing and training, during which the existing 30-year old tower will continue to operate. The digital tower will become fully operational in 2019.

This year London City Airport, which is marking its 30^th anniversary, will also begin construction on its £350 million City Airport Development Programme (CADP). The major project will enable an additional 2 million passengers per year to use the airport by 2025 and add up to 30,000 permitted flights per year.

The plans for the only airport actually in London include; 7 new aircraft stands to accommodate next-generation aircraft, a parallel taxiway to maximise runway capacity, and a terminal extension to accommodate increasing passenger numbers.

source : https://tinyurl.com/mzw9k7j

and this new drone is attempting to solve that problem. It’s shaped like a predator bird, and it’s designed to scare away it’s feathered counterparts.