Aurrigo's Autonomous Dolly

Introduction:
Large airports see thousands of passengers every single day. Every passenger brings luggage on board with them every time they fly. In order to get this luggage from the terminal to the aircraft, dollies are used to transport large amounts of suitcases and bags at a time. These dollies are usually connected, 3 or 4 at a time, to a motorized vehicle that, once completely filled, will drive across the apron to the plane. This can be a very inefficient system once broken down. In order to eliminate this inefficiency, a company called Aurrigo has developed an autonomous dolly to transport luggage.

Method/Discussion:

(Figure.1 Autonomous Dolly)

For a class regarding airport regulations, I was tasked with finding something that I found interesting that was occurring in the aviation industry. For this I chose this autonomous dolly. This autonomous dolly is a new innovation that allows for a new system of transporting luggage designed to be used at Heathrow. Currently, as stated before, vehicles with 3 to 4 dollies are attached together and moved the aircraft. "The current method is to have one manually driven tug towing three dollies behind. It can’t move until they are all full." This system can be inefficient because, for example, even if one dolly is completely full, the others cannot move to the plane. Heathrow operates over 900 traditional dollies every single day and sees 213,000 passengers come and go. The traffic is immense and traditional methods can be hindered by even the slightest of mistakes such as luggage falling off. To combat this, a dolly was designed to be able to carry luggage, once loaded, to the aircraft. This dolly is equipped with gps and lidar and is able to be paired with a specific plane to travel to. The dollies feature collision avoidance systems that will allow a plethora of them to be operating at a single time to ensure peak performance of the airport. (Figure.1) The dolly uses much of the same components that a drone uses for flying and collision avoidance systems.

Conclusion/Implications:
This technology has immensely helped Heathrow manage their traffic every day. It has increased the safety of the apron by keeping less employees off of the runways and airstrip. If applied to other components in the world, this technology could help to improve the functionality and safety of many other things.