People are travelling by air each year and a common complaint is delayed flights. 10% of flight delays are caused by inefficient ground handling, amounting to €8.9 billion in annual losses. On top of that, smart technologies are an upcoming trend in the airport industry. Automation via the application of robotics and ICT plays, and will play even more in the future, a vital role in airports’ operation and traffic facilitation, passenger processing and security. As such, some airports have started exploring the use of specific autonomous vehicles (AVs) or kits to remotely control vehicles. But progress is still slow, widening the gap between cutting-edge and archaic facilities. Existing solutions offer partial automation (e.g. automation kits that need human presence for their operation), can be very expensive (up to €500K/vehicle in case of AVs where the whole ground handling services – GHS – needs to be replaced) and most are limited to very specific activities (moving baggage or shuttling passengers). IVObility is a fully automated robot driver that can be installed in any conventional vehicle within 10mins, converting it into an AV. Our innovation aims to reduce inefficient ground handling by automating ground handling services, making them faster, safer, more robust, less dependent on human operators, and able to withstand all weather conditions. To bring our innovation to the market, we need the support of the EIC Accelerator, to achieve the following objectives during the 24-month project: optimize the design and finalize the HW/SW development; finalize and develop the final prototype; conduct at least two 8-10 month pilot tests with our early adopters; automate the module production to achieve a final price reduction of at least 40%; acquire the necessary certification (CE marking); and set-up a solid dissemination, communication and commercialization strategy to launch the product to the market by Q3/2022.
