Oct 03, 2011Last month, as passengers arrived at Helsinki Airport from Asia on their way to another European destination, some used an RFID-enabled "airport guidance display card" that helped them locate their gate, learn if their departing flight had changed and navigate queues at the passport-control area. The pocketsize device, developed by Finnish RFID firm Agaidi, also worked for those seeking a flight to Asia from another European location.
The Helsinki airport, managed by Finnish airport-management group Finavia, concluded a month-long pilot last week. The pilot was designed to test the technology within a 500-meter-long (1,640-foot-long) area of the airport, in which 10 or so passengers at any given time use the device to obtain flight information. Data being collected on Agaidi's back-end software enabled the airport to learn more about the flow of traffic through its facility, and to potentially identify bottlenecks.
Helsinki Airport is becoming one of the primary hubs through which travelers pass between Asia and Europe. The number of international passengers has increased by more than 50 percent over the past decade, the airport reports, and another 15 percent this year. As the quantity of passengers increases, the airport has been investigating technological solutions that would allow it to improve its passenger flow.
The technology was designed to optimize airport capacity by managing real-time passenger traffic data, as well as enable airports to locate passengers arriving late to a departure gate, and provide that information to airlines. In addition, says Timo Koivisto, Finavia's passenger operations manager, the system was intended to provide "self-service guidance with passenger-specific information to ensure that passengers are at the right gate at right time for their connection flight." For passengers, the technology could also be utilized to provide information about airport services—such as cafés, restaurants and shops within the areas in which they are located—as well as instructions to help them move through passport inspection and on to the proper gate for their next flight.
For the pilot, Helsinki Airport's management wished to test how well the technology could track the movements of passengers carrying the RFID-enabled device, as well as provide useful data to those individuals. The airport will now review pilot results in order to ascertain where traffic bottlenecks might exist, as well as how they might be resolved.
In the section of the airport in which the pilot is being conducted, Agaidi installed three 433 MHz RFID readers, known as access points, complying with the ISO 18000-7 (Dash7) RFID standard, according to Marko Mattila, Agaidi's CTO. The firm also installed seven battery-powered 433 MHz beacons to identify the devices' locations as they move about the airport. Agaidi software sits on the airport's database, retrieving flight information. The tag consists of a Texas Instruments TI CC430 chip, as well as a Thinergy thin-film battery from Infinite Power Solutions. The battery self-charges via a 13.56 MHz high-frequency (HF) inductive coupling. The device can also be powered with cell batteries, in which case the battery's lifespan would be approximately three years. It fits into a pocket, and measures about 7 centimeters (2.7 inches) in width, 12 centimeters (4.7 inches) in length and 4.5 millimeters (0.2 inch) in thickness. The card includes a 2.7-inch-wide electronic-paper (e-paper) screen that can display multiple lines of text. The exact quantity of lines or characters that screen can display at any point in time is dependant on the text's font size and style.
After receiving the display card, the passenger next arrived at the passport-control area, where passports must be examined and stamped before travelers can visit shops and restaurants or go to their gate. At this location, a beacon transmitted its own unique ID number, and the card's tag responded by transmitting its own ID, along with that of the beacon, to one of the three access points. With this information, the airport then retained a real-time record of how quickly passengers passed through each area of the airport.
The software sent continual updates, via a transmission from the nearest access point, regarding which queue was the shortest. This update was displayed on the device's e-paper screen.
After each passenger's passport was stamped, another beacon on the exit side of the passport area transmitted that information to the tag, which forwarded that beacon ID number and its own ID to the nearest access point. The Agaidi software then received a transmission from the reader, thereby determining that the individual had completed the passport process. Meanwhile, the software instructed the interrogator to transmit the gate number to the passenger's card, which displayed that data on the card. In the event that the flight was delayed, or if the gate number had changed, the card would display the revised information.
If an individual was late for a flight, or was moving toward the wrong section of the airport, the device displayed an alert. The Agaidi software could also have issued an alert to the airport staff, and that data could then have been forwarded to the appropriate airline, had the staff chosen to do so. This would have provided the airline with that passenger's location, enabling it to determine, based on that information, whether the flight could wait for that individual.
Just prior to boarding his or her flight, the traveler returned the device to the airport staff, so that it could then be reused by a subsequent passenger.
Details regarding device usage during the pilot have yet to be reviewed by the airport's employees, though one result (based on volunteers' comments) is that Agaidi intends, in the future, to add firmware instructions on the device that would enable it to vibrate when a message changes on the screen. If the pilot is deemed successful, the airport intends to permanently install the solution, though a timeline for such a deployment has not yet been determined.
