GMR-led Hyderabad International Airport has introduced ‘IoT enabled Smart Baggage Trolleys’ --thereby becoming the country’s first airport to deploy IoT for tracking and maintaining the availability of baggage trolleys for passengers in the real time across the airport.
The airport has deployed LoRa (Long Range) IOT platform for the Airport Baggage Trolley Project. The entire fleet of 3,000 baggage trolleys have been enabled with technology. With this, there will be substantial reduction in the waiting time of passengers for trolleys.
As per IATA (International Air Transport Association), a global organisation supporting aviation with global standards for airline safety, security, efficiency and sustainability, there should be at least 160 trolleys available for one million passengers at any airport.
This Smart Baggage Trolley management addresses challenges of trolley retrieval and replenishment by locating trolleys at the right time and at the right spot. It also helps tackle theft of trolleys and empowers the airport to meet passenger requirements.
With an inbuilt alert mechanism, in case of any trolleys carried out of a “no airport zone” area, it generates an alert message tipping off the location for necessary action which can then be taken to retrieve.
SGK Kishore, ED-South & Chief Innovation Officer, GMR Airports said, “Hyderabad International Airport has been the flag bearer of innovation and technology adoption. After the successful projects like domestic and international E-boarding and Face Recognition trials, and 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.”