Grant: Alliance Grants

An increasing number of air travellers need some form of mobility assistance at airports.Currently this typically requires an airport or airline staff person to push the traveller in a wheelchair to their various stops (through security, to and from gates and baggage areas, to the washroom, etc.). This greatly increases labour costs at a time when airports are having trouble filling positions torun airports smoothly and efficiently.The objective of this project is to research and develop a prototype system that provides safe and efficient mobility assistance at airports in the form of a wheelchair convoy led by a single staff person. Each wheelchair in the convoy will be based upon a standard manual wheelchair, retrofitted with joystick-controlled motorized wheels, and then interfaced with with AI computing and visual sensing hardware (RGBD depth camera). The resulting 'AirChair' platform will be programmed to either follow a designated human operator (if they are the first chair in the convoy) or the preceding AirChair in the convoy. Sensing, computing and actuation for each chair will be integrated under the open-source Robot Operating System (ROS).The technology will improve the service at airports for those needing mobility assistance and relieve labour pressures for the airport, airlines and contractors.