Airports Differentiating Using Internet of Things (IoT)
and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Short Term Application Examples (Happening Now)

IoT Sensors in Airport Equipment: Since this information can be about anything (including GPS location, WiFi-based micro-location, distance traveled, temperature, vibration, sound, and many more), the value created is limited only by the business problems airports need to solve. The digital information created by IoT sensors is ingested, aggregated, and transformed automatically, then used by airport workers to drive efficiencies and reduce cost. Examples include:

• More efficiently locating ground equipment using apps.
• Equipment audits, stocktakes, and business intelligence to better understand how equipment is being used.
• Warning systems and reporting to prevent airfield collisions and forbidden movements outside geolocated boundaries.
• Preventative maintenance of ground equipment, including locating and proactively maintaining ground service equipment, according to its actual use profile rather than a maintenance schedule; resulting in greater uptime for ground service equipment and reduced maintenance costs.

Intelligent airfield planning and recommendations including:

• Reducing tarmac waiting times
• Optimized use of grid power over aircraft auxiliary power units (APUs) to improve air quality and reduce airline costs.
• Optimize gate usage.

Traveller Information Systems including chatbots to improve the traveller experience and reduce reliance on customer service agents. This is easily achieved by Airports Differentiating Using IoT and AI and natural language understanding technologies, which also incorporate language translation. The majority of questions asked by travellers are likely to be answered by a small number of very similar answers.

• Image recognition to produce automated warnings/recommendations for carry-on baggage scanners to flag potential security issues or obstructed views.
• Artificial Intelligence to generate alerts and notifications of safety and security concerns (e.g. spills, obstructions, unattended baggage).
• Traveller traffic monitoring to deploy staff to the right location depending on bottlenecks, resulting in shorter and faster lines for a better traveller experience.

Facilities Management, for instance, installing IoT sensors on various bathroom assets (including faucets, toilets, lighting, soap dispensers, air fresheners, toilet paper dispensers, and more), to alert in real-time of various shortages and breakdowns. Similarly, using people counters and customer input buttons to capture the actual use of facilities such as lounges enabling facilities management to operate more efficiently whilst providing a better experience for the traveller.

Baggage systems with intelligence and alerts to reduce incorrect routing and instances of lost baggage.

Intelligent advertising to increase retail revenue.

HoloLens and Augmented Reality allowing security to see information about each traveller to accompany body scans.

Wayfinding using sensors, beacons, and apps in multiple languages to guide travellers through the airport, reducing the reliance on customer service agents.

Digital incoming passenger cards.

Medium and Long Term Application Examples

• Automated vehicles to deliver baggage.
• Robots to automatically fuel planes.
• Artificial Intelligence and autonomous equipment to identify and clear tarmac debris.
• Minimised greenhouse emissions through optimised flight plans.
• Reduced noise levels for nearby areas and neighbourhoods.
• Biometric crew access.
• Biometric passenger access.
• Automated wheelchairs.
• Intelligent runway and warning light recommendations.
• Tracking history to determine how/when baggage has been opened and checked.
• Digital Twins to replicate, forecast and scenario test operations.
• Fully automated tarmacs.

In the short term, Airports Differentiating Using IoT and AI should carefully craft implementation strategies that aim for incremental quick wins, whilst simultaneously envisioning potential long term applications to ensure that architectures and implementations are secure, cloud based and scalable. This will ensure that long term applications can be easily incorporated in the future. Security and privacy in the aviation industry are imperative, and a zero-trust, protected environment is immutable.

AI and IoT can be applied at every stage of a traveller’s journey (see below). AI Consulting Group’s unique approach can include an initial agile sprint to conduct an opportunity catalogue exercise help refine the airport technology strategy. Whilst advanced concepts like fully automated tarmacs are still years away, the secure cloud based technology needed is already available and being used for smart airport applications now. Airports who do not qualify and enable these architecture will quickly fall behind. Airports should map their revenue generating activities, costs, and customer experience pain points to the traveller journey to create a roadmap of opportunities (opportunity catalogue) that can transform the traveller, airline operator and employee experience. AI Consulting group is helping airports to get started by generating compelling business cases based on real return on investment (ROI) to remove the perceived cost barrier of implementing AI and IoT; taking into account ROI prioritised goals, timelines, and stakeholders to reduce uncertainty and encourage adoption.