Nov. 26—Hungry passengers ready to board flights at Pittsburgh Worldwide Airport would possibly not have to go away their gates. Quickly, they might be capable of hail a robotic vendor to deliver them a snack.
An autonomous merchandising robotic run by California-based tech firm Ottonomy is being examined at Pittsburgh Worldwide as a part of Allegheny County Airport Authority’s xBridge program. The robotic rolls across the terminal on wheels and delivers orders positioned via a smartphone app.
Cole Wolfson, xBridge director, stated the robotic is known as Ottobot. As a part of the testing, free bottled water and sodas can be found for volunteers who order on the app. After a 30-day pilot, the authority hopes to make use of Ottobot on an even bigger scale.
“We are going to look to validate a enterprise case for working inside PIT with a number of distributors,” Wolfson stated. “In that stage, the Ottonomy app would provide a menu of accessible gadgets, and passengers would be capable of order and pay for these gadgets by way of their telephones.”
Ottonomy CEO Ritukar Vijay believes the robots could be scalable to airports around the globe and that Ottobots are higher positioned than different autonomous robots as a result of they do not require human help.
“Throughout the globe, airports are comparable. There may be massive and small ones, however roughly the general setup is analogous,” Vijay stated in an announcement. “If it really works at a few airports, it’s relevant to virtually all of them.”
Wolfson stated he hopes the autonomous merchandising robots would possibly “assist alleviate peaks in buyer demand and ease line congestion at concessions.”
Allegheny County Airport Authority, which runs Pittsburgh Worldwide and Allegheny County Airport in West Mifflin, is dedicating funding to check Ottobot however would not say how a lot.
Ottobot is not the one autonomous robotic at Pittsburgh Worldwide Airport. There are also autonomous ground scrubbers roaming the terminal.
Vijay stated he believes autonomous robots have a future for sensible use at airports.
“Airports are a novel spot. There’s some quantity of construction and scale,” he stated. “It is rather dynamic the place the customers are involved. That form of dynamic atmosphere, that may be very, essential, to determine how autonomous navigation could be utilized inside that area.”
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