A new autonomous luggage and cargo system has been launched today that promises to offer a host of operational and financial savings to the aviation sector.

Aurrigo, one of the world’s leading autonomous vehicle specialists, has officially unveiled the Auto-Dolly®, which will give airports the opportunity to move luggage and cargo around indoor and outdoor settings without the need for human operators.

Auto-Dolly® has the ability to navigate autonomously from one task to another, collecting and dropping off the luggage or cargo automatically using a powered roller deck and the unique ability to ‘crab’ sideways when docking and parallel parking.

All weather running is achieved by weather-hardened sensors and innovative software processes that allow the Auto-Dollies to operate in snow, heavy rain, direct sunlight and fog.

A recent trial at Heathrow and a digital-twinning project with a leading Far Eastern airport have revealed that this technology can reduce the number of traditional tugs and trailers used to transport luggage and cargo by two thirds, as well as substantially cutting carbon emissions.

“The aviation sector is going through one of the worst periods in living memory. When it emerges, it will need to explore ways where it can achieve cost savings and increase operational efficiencies, including turning around planes and getting them away on time,” explained David Keene, Chief Executive of Aurrigo.

“Auto-Dolly® will revolutionise airports by improving efficiency in the way aircraft luggage and cargo is loaded, unloaded and handled. Auto-Dolly® virtually eliminates all human contact from the baggage and cargo process, extremely important in today’s Covid world and unlike the tugs that are used today, every Auto-Dolly® is able to carry a load. This results in improved space utilisation in the baggage hall as no valuable space is taken up by a vehicle that cannot move something.”

He continued: “Our autonomous vehicles are controlled by our Ai based cyber secure fleet management system called Auto-Connect™, which intelligently assigns Auto-Dollies in the optimum way to meet the strict operational deadlines at the airport.”

“Together with the Auto-Dolly® launch we are also releasing our Auto-Sim™ product which is a sophisticated airport simulator software tool allowing customers to baseline current operations and then model how to migrate from manual methods through to a fully automated Auto-Dolly® operation.”

He concluded: “Engagement with lead customers, together with continuing on-site airport trials, have been fantastic and we’re now in the position to launch our Auto-Dolly® solution to the world. This could equate to hundreds of millions of pounds of cost reduction every year for the airport industry, plus the huge environmental savings gained by reducing overall emissions of the fleet of today’s inefficient tractors and trailers.”

For further information, please visit Aurrigo