Leo Loitering At Airport Check-In
There are always boffins eager to take automation to the next step.
At the airport terminal, it seems, that means putting wheels on an automated check-in machine and morphing it with a luggage trolley to create a baggage handling robot called Leo.
Geneva Airport now has a prototype on test.
Leo loiters outside the terminal building until a curios punter turns up to scan their boarding card and pop one or two suitcases in his locker.
Then, off he trundles, using the back route to the baggage sorting area where only the handler for the correct plane can open his door, recover the bags and take them to the tarmac.
There is only one Leo at the moment, so anyone desperate to use him today could miss their plane by waiting for his return.
But ground handling SITA hopes that the trial will be a raging success and will spawn an army of Leos marching between landside and airside.
They are looking to eradicate the cheery check-in attendant.
They believe that this full automation will speed up check-in even further, reduce its cost and eliminate a major cause of lost luggage in one fell swoop.
Whether, though, it could introduce new problems remains to be seen.
Would forty-plus check-in queues at an airport be replaced by just one long, ill-tempered line waiting for Leos?
A uniformed check-in attendant behind a desk has a sanction against a queue jumper: “Sir will not be getting on a plane at all today…,” but it is difficult to automate that.
To see this potential future of check-in for yourself, pop ‘Leo Geneva Airport’ into Google images.
