PremiumHyderabad International Airport, led by GMR, has introduced Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled Smart baggage trolleys on Friday which is in line with the Digital India Programme of the Government of India.
In an attempt to make Hyderabad a Smart Airport City, the GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd. (GHIAL) is the first airport in India to deploy IoT for tracking and maintaining the availability of baggage trolleys for passengers in the real time across the airport.
Under the Airport Baggage Trolley Project, a fleet of 3000 baggage trolleys have been enabled with IoT technology with the LoRa (Long Range) platform. Using this technology will help reduce the waiting time of passengers for baggage trolleys which could be substantial and will also ensure sufficient availability of the trolleys in real time.
"Trolley management and replenishment will be based on the requirement at various areas across the airport enhancing efficiency and passenger experience while making way for smooth operations as well," GHIAL said in a statement.
"There are two critical zones where availability of trolleys for passengers is vital – Departures Ramp and Baggage Belts at the Arrivals," the company added.
This technology helps the operations team track the availability of the numbers of trolleys at different areas in the airport and plan with the real-time dashboards to ensure that the passengers can avail the trolleys at the right time and place.
According to the guidelines given by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), there should be at least 160 trolleys available for 1 million passengers at any airport.
This IoT-based trolley system is compatible on mobile, desktop and laptop in order to make it user-friendly. The system also comes with an in-built alert mechanism, for trolleys that are carried out of a "no-zone" area. In such cases, it generated an alert with a message giving the location of the trolley in order to take necessary action to get it back.
"After the successful marquee projects like domestic and international E-boarding and Face Recognition trials, we are revolutionizing the way baggage trolleys are managed with the adoption of IoT as a smart and intelligent solution to help enhance passenger experience and also enable smooth operations and inventory management," SGK Kishore, ED-South & Chief Innovation Officer, GMR Airports said.
"Smart Baggage Trolleys is one of the many initiatives as part of our digital excellence transformation and journey," Kishore added.
