Autonomous Vehicles Transform Airport Mobility
Enhancing Internal Airport Transportation:

Autonomous Passenger Vehicle Solutions

Airports, with their vast areas spanning multiple terminals, operate not only as transportation hubs but also as small cities. As air travel continues to grow and airports play an increasingly pivotal role in the global transportation network, making internal airport transportation more accessible and comfortable for passengers has become a top priority.

Within the airport, facilities like shopping areas, restaurants, lounges, and boarding gates significantly enhance the passenger experience. However, navigating through such large and busy environments can be challenging, especially for passengers with mobility issues. To address this, a systems integrator reached out to AAEON to find a solution specifically designed for an internal airport autonomous vehicle. The BOXER-8645AI was selected as the perfect fit, providing the capabilities needed to ensure smooth and efficient internal airport transportation.

Overcoming the Challenges of Internal Airport Mobility
Pedestrian and Obstacle Avoidance
Real-Time Sensor Data Processing
Autonomous Navigation and Flexible Route Planning
Durability and Stability

This vehicle is designed specifically for internal airport use, enabling efficient transport of passengers between terminals, boarding gates, restaurants, and other facilities within the airport. Operating in the complex and busy environment of an airport, the vehicle must navigate autonomously without human intervention. Key challenges include safely avoiding pedestrians and obstacles while providing real-time navigation to ensure passengers reach their destinations quickly and safely.

The vehicle, equipped with the BOXER-8645AI, processes vast amounts of sensor data in real time, allowing it to seamlessly navigate through high-traffic areas within the airport. Its ability to avoid obstacles and adjust its route based on real-time conditions makes it an ideal solution for improving internal airport mobility, especially for passengers requiring additional assistance. This ensures smooth, reliable, and efficient transportation throughout the airport, significantly enhancing the overall travel experience.

How AAEON’s BOXER-8645AI Drove the Project’s Success
BOXER-8645AI

Key reasons for the client choosing the BOXER-8645AI to power their autonomous passenger transport vehicle was its unique combination of GMSL2 camera support, its ability to run extremely detailed AI inference models, and its rugged mechanical design.

GMSL2 Camera Support for Real-time Vision

Equipped with eight FAKRA connectors for GMSL2 camera integration, the BOXER-8645AI could provide the real-time transmission of high-resolution image data, with the additional advantage of data rates of up to 6 Gbps. As a result, image data could be transmitted with far less latency than cameras installed via other interfaces, making it ideal for the application.

The autonomous passenger transport vehicle benefitted from the fact that the BOXER-8645AI could host multiple GMSL2 cameras, allowing it to maintain a comprehensive field of vision. This allowed the vehicle to navigate crowded areas, avoid obstacles, and transport passengers safely across various areas of the airport while accounting for all objects within its vicinity.

Enhancing AI Precision: GNSS & Time/Frame Sync

For collision avoidance, the BOXER-8645AI’s serial communication interfaces were paramount, with the system hosting four DB-9 ports offering isolated CANBus, an 8-bit digital I/O, and two RS-232/422/485 signals. The customer utilized the device’s CANBus interface to implement control over the vehicle’s motors and actuators, while its RS-232 option was programmed to receive data from proximity sensors and execute real-time responses such as relaying event triggers to the BOXER-8645AI.

The system’s RS-485 was also used in conjunction with its LAN ports to connect multiple LiDAR sensors, boosting the obstacle detection and avoidance capabilities of the vehicle. For navigation, the BOXER-8645AI’s GNSS support was crucial, allowing for precise positioning within the airport with time and frame synchronization to align sensor and camera data in real time. In addition to this, 9-Axis sensor support enabled SLAM functionality, generating orientation data to go along with the application’s LIDAR and visual data.

First Class AI Inferencing

By choosing AAEON’s BOXER-8645AI, the client also leveraged exceptional AI inferencing, given the PC’s NVIDIA® Jetson AGX Orin™ platform. Relying on the 2048-core NVIDIA Ampere architecture GPU with 64 Tensor Cores and up to 275 TOPs of AI performance, the BOXER-8645AI provided the vehicle with the tools needed to detect and recognize its surroundings without the need for exclusive path-planning.

Thanks to its NVIDIA JetPack™ SDK support, the BOXER-8645AI offered a wealth of preinstalled development components, including the NVIDIA® CUDA® Toolkit, Deep Neural Network library (cuDNN), and the NVIDIA® TensorRT™ API ecosystem. Alongside this was AAEON’s own OS, tailored for AMR use. Among AAEON’s offerings were a DIO setting command and sensor registers for IMU sensor integration.

Military-Grade Hardware

The client found that the mechanical design of the BOXER-8645AI was more than capable of dealing with the environmental challenges that their application would encounter. Designed to tolerate deployment in settings such vehicles and rolling stock, the BOXER-8645AI boasts MIL-STD-810G standard tolerance to both vibration and shock, ensuring it remained operational within such a dynamic setting.

Project Impact

The BOXER-8645AI was integrated into an ergonomically designed unit capable of seating two passengers at a time. As a result of this addition to the airport’s offerings, passengers with mobility issues and those requiring extra assistance now have peace of mind when travelling to their departure gates. Moreover, the application has increased customer satisfaction, given the vehicle’s contribution to providing a comfortable way to access all airport facilities, regardless of individual circumstances. Finally, the contribution of the BOXER-8645AI can be best illustrated with how it helped the application adhere to strict safety standards, enhancing the travel experience for all.