ADLINK Self Bag Drop

Airport Congestion

With the increase of passengers traveling around the world, airlines and airports are searching for new and innovative ways to accommodate and allocate the fluctuating passenger volume. A clear message from SITA Passenger IT Trends Survey since 2016 is that passengers prefer technology delivered over people-delivered service, indicating a complete self check-in service can be the key to alleviate airport congestion. Although many airlines nowadays are encouraging self check-in via smartphone prior to arriving at the airport, the result is not significant as passengers still have to visit the airline’s counter eventually for baggage drop-off. Clearly, baggage handling is quite an obstacle for airports in their pursuit of a streamlined business model.

Revolutionary Approach

SITA Air Transport IT Review has pointed out that although mishandled baggage cost has dropped significantly by nearly 50% from $4.22 to $2.3 billion due to enhancement in technology and operational process, every lost bag still makes for a disillusioned customer and room for improvements. One of our customers, a leading system innovator with expertise in delivering baggage handling and integrated security screening systems, is a game changer who launches the world’s most accessible, efficient and intuitive self-service bag-drop solution to accelerate passenger circulation.

Solution

ADLINK had just the solution to meet the customer’s stringent requirements for this project, our SP Series of smart panels which are embedded open frame panel computers, ready for integration. The main reason why ADLINK’s SP Series surpasses many others, according to the customer, is that they were able to cleanly and simply integrate it into the baggage drop system without additional modifications or customization.

Comprehensive Functionality

The mainboard of ADLINK’s SP Series smart panel offers a wide range of I/O options to allow a wide range of device connectivity for integrated control of the many aspects of a simple drop-scan-go self service, including:

• USB – connecting the camera, tag reader and scanner for bag dimension measurement and passenger boarding authentication
• DI/O – connecting the emergency button for error handing and conveyor belt for baggage transport
• COM – connecting the weigh scale for bag weight measurement
• LAN – connecting to the remote server for data transmission

With the mainboard’s wide range of integrated I/O, installation of the baggage drop system is facilitated with reduced effort, time and cost.

High Responsiveness

The modular design of the SP Series provides scalable computing power (including Intel Atom® and Intel® Core™ processors) to provide the baggage drop system with the optimal level of performance. Boosted with high-performance computing power, the baggage drop system is responds rapidly to complex system operations and passenger interactions while maintaining a stable workflow, which in return improves passenger throughput.

Reliability

To maintain long-term and reliable operations for airport services operating around the clock, ADLINK’s SP Series smart panels feature robust construction, meeting or exceeding rigorous industry standards. These industrial grade panel computers have an MTBF of 50k hours for proven reliability that minimizes system down time. The mainboard also features a wide operating temperature range from -40˚C to 85˚C, rugged SODIMM memory slot, and wide DC input voltage range (12V ± 5% or 9-36V ± 5%) to adapt to different environmental and operating conditions. The overvoltage protection (OVP) and undervoltage protection (UVP) mechanism also safeguards against unstable power supply conditions. The SP Series has a front panel with an IP65 ingress protection rating to protect it from dust and other airborne particles, as well as enhanced vibration resistance to ensure secure signal transmission owing to reduced abrasion of edge connectors. All of the above combined provide the SP Series with outstanding durability and reliability.

Competitive Performance

ADLINK’s SP Series smart panels offer a ready-to-use open frame form factor for straightforward integration, and a modular architecture consisting of selectable display size plus mainboard with a pre-validated mechanical design, delivering low installation effort and fast time-to-market. Function expandability is also available via customization of a Function Module for development of application-specific features. In summary, the SP Series of smart panels is a truly SwaP optimized product featuring a compact size, light weight industrial grade open frame panel computer with modular expansion capability, scalable computing performance to support high levels of multitasking, and an ideal design for common-use self-service (CUSS) compliant baggage-drop solutions, yielding a lower total cost of ownership with time to market efficiency.

Progress and Prospective

The adoption of ADLINK’s SP Series smart panels is proving to be a successful approach in revolutionizing unmanned airport services, further expanding on its great potential in many other HMI applications, including versatile kiosk, retail ordering, ticketing and interactive entertainment, where broad spectrum of requirements is demanded. With the advent of new technologies, airports are embracing a combination of contactless and self services, paving the way for a true reduction in manual assistance requirements and fast clearance of passengers.

As the widespread adoption of self services continues to grow, optimized customer satisfaction, improved passenger and airport security, and potential increases in retail revenue are certain to be the result of promoting airport service automation, illustrating how crucial ADLINK’s SP Series smart panels can be to revenue-driven airport services. Although unmanned airport services can bring many upsides, there is still a sizable portion of the population that needs to be served the old-fashioned way. However, the growing implementation of airport automated services is a promising advancement as more and more passengers are adapting to and enjoying the benefits of these technological innovations.