November 22, 2024 • 45 mins
Episode Summary:
In this episode of The GSE Podcast, host Matt Weitzel dives into the potential of integrating autonomous vehicles into the airport environment. Joined by a panel of industry experts including Terry Seaworth (HNTB), Brian Wemple (Piedmont Airlines), Marty Gray (Air Canada), Ruben Aradas (formerly UPS), and Dave Edwards (GSP Airport), the discussion unpacks the opportunities, challenges, and transformative potential of autonomous Ground Support Equipment (GSE). Key topics include safety improvements, operational efficiency, weather resilience, regulatory hurdles, and the future role of autonomous technology in both passenger and cargo operations.
Key Highlights:
• Opportunities with Autonomy:
• Enhanced safety and reduced equipment damage.
• Increased efficiency in operations, especially during peak and off-schedule times.
• Potential applications such as autonomous dollies and pushback vehicles.
• Challenges in Implementation:
• Regulatory and operational adjustments for airport environments.
• Training employees to work with and adapt to autonomous systems.
• Addressing weather-related and technical reliability concerns.
• Insights from the Panelists:
• Brian Wemple shares Piedmont Airlines’ experience with electric tractors and the excitement around autonomous safety benefits.
• Marty Gray emphasizes the need for employee buy-in and a culture shift to integrate autonomous vehicles effectively.
• Ruben Aradas discusses the potential for autonomous dollies in cargo operations to save critical time.
• Dave Edwards highlights the importance of controlled testing environments like airports to refine the technology.
If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your colleagues and peers in the GSE community. Don’t forget to rate and review The GSE Podcast on your favorite platform. Stay tuned for future episodes as we continue to bring you the latest trends, insights, and innovations in ground operations.
Links and Resources:
• Explore more about TractEasy’s autonomous solutions: https://xcedgse.com/
• Learn about Xcēd Ground Support Equipment Leasing: https://tracteasy.com/
Looking for reliable and flexible ground support equipment leasing solutions? Look no further than Xcēd! As your trusted partner, Xcēd specializes in tailored operating leases for ground handlers and airlines, offering top-notch equipment and flexible terms to suit your needs. Whether you're seeking the latest electric GSE or traditional equipment, Xcēd has you covered with competitive rates and exceptional customer service. Keep your operations running smoothly and efficiently with Xcēd. Visit xcedgse.com today and soar to new heights with Xcēd Ground Support Equipment Leasing!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:00):
Music,
Matthew Weitzel (00:07):
celebrating 10 years of trailblazing in ground
support Xcēd marks a decade asyour leading partner in ground
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long term leasing solutions.
Xcēd adapts to your uniqueoperational needs. Whether
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growth, we provide the rightequipment to keep your
(00:27):
operations running smoothly.
This anniversary, we renew ourdedication to empowering your
ground operations withefficiency and innovation. With
Xcēd, you're equipped forsuccess today and prepare for
the challenges of tomorrow.
Exceed driving excellence on theground year after year. Explore
more at xcedgse.com
Terry Seaworth (00:56):
this is Laura McGrath,
Unknown (00:57):
this is Jennifer Mattison.
Terry Seaworth (00:59):
This is Sophie Skinner Jones and you are
listening to the GSE podcast,all right. Well,
Matthew Weitzel (01:05):
good morning.
I'm Matt Weitzel.
I'm with Matt with Xcēd groundsupport equipment leasing, and
host of the GSE podcast. So Idon't know if you all are
listeners or not. Me should haveto check us out on all the major
platforms. And today, we're hereto talk about, you know,
integrating autonomous vehiclesinto an airport environment. And
(01:26):
to help me out with that, I havea full host of people here,
panelists that are going to helpme, because they are much
smarter than I am, and they'regoing to help help us really
kind of dive into this topic.
All right, so the firstquestion, Terry, you're up. So
what excites you most aboutpotential autonomous vehicles in
your operations? So I work,you're not, you're not an
(01:49):
operator, but yeah, I mean,you're, yeah, I
Terry Seaworth (01:52):
was gonna say airport, right? Airport
consulting, yeah. And, you know,I think for for any airport, you
have to look at what's going tosolve a problem. So for
airports, I would say there arepinch points or bottlenecks in
the baggage handling processthat could be improved by an
efficient system that willtransfer bags from point to
(02:15):
point. When it's labor intensiveto gather a few bags here, a few
bags there. I would also saythere's an opportunity to
improve customer service. So,you know, an autonomous system
that can prevent or minimize thenumber of loss or missing bags
would be a huge boon to both theairlines and then the airport
(02:37):
itself. Yeah,
Matthew Weitzel (02:38):
for sure. All right, you okay, down to Brian
there. You guys introduceyourself. Oh, you know, we
should definitely introduction,sorry. So Terry, Terry. HNTB,
right. So um, if you tell uswhat you do? HNTB, sure.
Terry Seaworth (02:52):
Terry Seaworth, HNTB, I um. HNTB, does
transportation consulting. Ispecifically have worked in
aviation for the last 25 years,I do program and construction
management for airports who arelooking to expand their
infrastructure.
Brian Wemple (03:08):
Brian, good morning. Folks. Start with the
introduction, I guess so. Myname is Brian Wemple pulling
with the few moderator linesI've been since two live and I'm
sure the but I actually justcelebrated my 25 year
anniversary with Piedmont lastweek. So I've been doing this
for a little while, or somewould say, probably too long,
(03:28):
but actually started as a groundservice employee in Tallahassee
back in 1999 was a fun job whenI was in college, and I've
worked my way up. Right now, I'ma director we're seeing planning
for Piedmont, obviously, GSEprocurement. GSE projects is one
of my passions, and one thatI've worked on for many years,
(03:51):
and not to direct sound toolong. When back it was 22,009
2010 we were looking atCharlotte, one of our largest
actually, it is our largestoperation, where we do ground
handling and just handling. Andjust for clarity, Piedmont is an
airline that's owned by AmericanAirlines, and we fly airplanes
and we also provide groundhandling services. Piedmont has
(04:12):
ground handling in should bearound 65 locations across the
US. Our largest operation is inCharlotte. We have a large
operation Philadelphia. One ofmy counterparts, Mr. Zavala, is
a rent manager in Philadelphia,is with us. So we've got
probably around 8000 groundhandling employees across our
(04:33):
system, so pretty good breadthof different work scopes that we
have in our airports. We run theground up for American here at
GSP. And so while as you talk abit more about the project, I
think as we move it through, butagain, just to give you a little
bit of a background here, as wetalk to the panel questions,
let's see where was I going withthis Charlotte being our largest
(04:56):
operation, back in 2010 we.
Embarked on a project that wasback when grain technology was
really kind of coming into thespotlight. We were looking at
different opportunities ofprogram with different entities,
but we made the choice to go saywe want to bring electric
tractors into the operation.
(05:17):
That was US Airways at the time.
For those you know the history,obviously US Airways merged with
American so at US Airways, thatwas the first time that program
handling entity, I made thechoice to go electric versus,
say, like a regular, regularregulatory entity, something is
forcing it to happen, and we'venever looked back since we
brought the electric tractorsinto the operation. We did a lot
(05:39):
of work, planning, preparing,the employee groups, the
maintenance groups, and it was abeautiful project. And we
probably have just probablyaround 70, 6070, electric
tractors. We got a fleet of 40some electric pushbacks. I mean,
the sky has been limited there.
(05:59):
I still let this you know, fromour perspective at Piedmont, and
I think across America as awhole, there's absolutely a
desire to try to branch out andin the right way, explore and
implement new technologies thatreally make the operation
better. And it's really apartnership with, you know, our
employee groups, and also withyou know, airport groups as
(06:21):
well, to make sure that we canmake this work well. And so we
look forward to the potentialthat we have with this product.
We're very interested in tryingto create a product for our
customers, and our customersbeing airline customers, and
also American Airlines, weprimarily service and providing
(06:43):
a safe and reliable product.
When we think about safe andreliable technologies like the
track easy project is is onewhere we definitely see a lot of
potential future opportunity.
Matthew Weitzel (06:56):
That's fantastic. Thank you so much.
And Marty beat thatintroduction,
Marty Gray (07:01):
all right, I
Brian Wemple (07:01):
might have taken everybody's time.
Marty Gray (07:05):
Good morning. I'm Marty Gray. I am Air Canada
director for ground supportequipment and maintenance, like
yourself, Brian, I've beenaround for quite some time. I'm
in my 27th year now with AirCanada technical by trade, and
here I am ultimately responsiblefor for what we do in our Canada
(07:26):
underground support side. Sothanks for having me. Oh, thank
Matthew Weitzel (07:29):
you so much.
Brian Wemple (07:31):
Good
Dave Edwards (07:31):
morning, everyone.
Ruben Aradas (07:32):
My name is Ruben Aradas. I work with UPS for
about 32 years. Currently, I'mretired, so how about a better
path to to my future, right? ButI did spend six, six of those 32
years with the UPS Airlines,managing their ground support
(07:53):
engineering department, and I'llkeep it short, just so that we
can move this along.
Brian Wemple (07:58):
Thanks. In the morning, I
Dave Edwards (08:01):
think I already made an introduction this
morning, although I feel likemorning, although I feel like
they'll land on the stagebecause I've got 35 plus years
in the airport business. Soobviously, you guys, some of you
guys, got a little ways to go.
You know, as I mentioned at theairport here, we're all about
innovation customer service. Howdo we improve things? You know,
it's servicing our customershere at GSP, and since we do do
things a little different thanmost airports around the
(08:22):
country, and engage in businessmodels that most airports don't
do, like cargo handling as anexample, and we do some
passenger charter handling aswell, and some airports do that
around the country, but we wejust really want to engage in
things that are going to improvethe overall level of service to
our customers here at GSP. Sowe're excited about any time
(08:43):
that we can bring new technologyto the table that helps us do
that. Yeah, for sure.
Marty Gray (08:49):
All right, let's,
Matthew Weitzel (08:50):
let's pass it back to Brian here. Let's, let's
give Brian's opinion on so whatexcites the most about potential
autonomous vehicles in youroperations? Yeah, absolutely. I
Brian Wemple (08:59):
try to try to keep it a little shorter. Going
forward, I was trying to do twoanswers, introduction and
answering the original question.
So but really, to piggyback offwhat I said earlier, it's the
excitement, I think is reallyabout the opportunities that are
presented with a vehicle likethis. I think everybody knows
what exists out there on themarket today, obviously on road
vehicles, and the understandingof what they're capable of
(09:23):
doing, what the potential isdown the road for those
vehicles. And so we look atthat, and we look at the airport
environment, we are thinking,Okay, now we got a situation
where we have probably even amore control environment than
what you have like on road, andtaking some of those
opportunities you have from theperspective of safety and also,
of course, efficiency, bringingthose elements into the airport
(09:45):
environment. How many guys havedriven on the airport ramp
before, especially if a lot youknow, around a lot of different
airplanes, right? Same time?
Charlotte airport is one thatI've driven on the ramp many
times Philadelphia. Never drivenin Philly, but I think Dave is
probably. Driven me in Phillybefore you realize really
quickly how much risk actuallyexists in the operation, right?
(10:08):
And you know, the folks that wehave working on the tarmac, you
know, we have a lot of greatfolks that have been doing it
for a lot of years. We all havefolks they've been doing it for
a very short period of time. Andyou put those folks out there,
it's an over hacking guys, Imean, and so when we talk about
safety and we talk about theopportunities that we can bring
equipment into the operationthat can increase that level
(10:31):
through technology, you know,again, it's something where we
should definitely be looking atthis. We're silly for not
looking at it, because it'ssomething that, you know, I
don't sound extreme, but I mean,it's something that could
potentially save a life, right?
And so it's important to us. Andso I think this is a really
good, structured way in doingthis type of review of the
(10:52):
technology in order to get tothat point where we can have,
you know, effective potentialrollouts in the future, and so
really safety, obviously,efficiency, and I think to a
certain extent, reliability aswell. So I think those would be
the three top things that I'd belooking forward to with this
type of technology.
Matthew Weitzel (11:12):
That's great answer, Marty, do you want to
you and talk about what kind ofexcites you about the autonomous
Sure.
Marty Gray (11:18):
I mean, the excitement for me is really the
unknown, right? If you look at,you know, what has come into our
industry over the last couple ofyears, I mean, the potential to
operate fundamentally differentthan we ever had before is
ponds, if you look whatelectrification in itself has
brought, and then, you know,really fast forward, a lot of
(11:39):
technology for aircraft damagemitigation, the you know, the
employees safety, essentiallythe safety of our people, our
facilities, our assets, so on,so forth. This whole lot of
fundamental change. And I thinknow that we're starting to talk
(11:59):
about autonomous vehicles. Airside, like this is a huge, huge
opportunity. That's how we seeit. You know, the performance
side is certainly one thing whenyou talk about reliability for
delivering bags point to point.
But how do we operate on a ramp?
You know, this is, this is whatexcites me. It's right now. It
said it's, it's unknown on onthe autonomous side, but we see
(12:24):
really bearing fruit in othermarkets. On it industries. It's
very, very evident that it's,it's going to be successful in
in an airport suburb. Yeah, I
Matthew Weitzel (12:33):
agree. Yeah.
Let's, let's talk to Ruben, eventhough you're retired Reb, and
I'm sure you have plenty, plentyof great ideas here. Yeah.
Ruben Aradas (12:41):
I mean, we view autonomy. We think that there's
three key benefits to autonomy,right? The first one is to
improve safety, right? Whodoesn't want to improve safety?
We also see it as increasing theefficiency of the operation. For
us, time is our enemy in thecargo business, right? Every
(13:03):
minute matters to us, and anyminute we can save is beneficial
to our on time performance. Andthen the third thing, I would
say, is reduction andmaintenance cost, right? So when
you put all, all three of thosethings together, you know you're
getting a better way ofgenerating revenue and profit
(13:26):
because you're not having to tomaintain you're improving the
safety and you're increasing theoperational efficiency of of the
work that's being done. Sothere's other things that also
benefit from autonomy. We talkedabout electric vehicles. So
sustainability comes into that.
And I think what the theelephant in the room is, is to
(13:47):
at some point offset labor,right? Because that's really
where much of the cost saving isgoing to come from.
Matthew Weitzel (13:56):
So Ruben broke away about it. She want to ask
you something, so why do youthink the cost of maintenance
will go down with an autonomousvehicle. Well,
Ruben Aradas (14:03):
if you work at UPS, we know how to destroy
equipment. There's a lot moreplay on ramp. I don't know how
much money we spend on paint andtouch up from scratching
equipment damaging equipment. Ifyou've ever seen an aircraft
maintenance pickup truck after ayear, it looks like it should go
to the junk pile, right? So wethink we're going to be able to
(14:24):
eliminate a lot of thatunnecessary maintenance to the
equipment. And you know, thevehicles are driving themselves,
like a grandfather would drivehis car, right? It takes care of
itself. It performs to theoptimal level, but at the same
time, including the reliabilityof that piece of equipment.
Matthew Weitzel (14:45):
Okay, thank you. That's a great answer, or
you can hand it down to Davethere.
Dave Edwards (14:50):
Yeah, I don't know that I can really add a whole
lot to what's what we said downthe panel. I mean, safety,
reliability, cost reductions inthe future. I mean all of those
things are. Important again tous here at the district, as I
mentioned, because we do run ourown cargo operation. In
particular, I think the key, andthis was mentioned earlier as
well, is there's no better placeto test this kind of technology
(15:13):
than on an airport in acontrolled environment. And I
say that as I mentioned duringmy opening remarks, that we've
been delving in for the last1113, years, automated slash
autonomous movement ofpassengers, and some of that
discussion that revolved aroundmixed traffic, autonomous
vehicles, and I just don'tbelieve that's there yet. It's
(15:33):
not going to be there for quitesome time. While. We have some
companies out here around thecountry, like Waymo, who are
running in Phoenix and a fewother places. The reality, at
the end of the day is it's stillvery much in its infancy. So I
think dedicated areas, anyonewe're going to put it in place
here, from a passenger movementperspective, it would be
dedicated right of ways thatcontrolled environment on the
(15:56):
airfield is really conducive totry to move forward with tests
with this technology and accruethat it simply can be effective
and that it will be effectiveforce in the future. Okay,
Matthew Weitzel (16:06):
you want to hand the mic back down to the
Terry here. So, Terry, whatchallenges do you foresee
integrating autonomous vehiclesinto an airport? Well,
Terry Seaworth (16:15):
I was, I was actually going to ask if I could
respond to what Dave just saw,no, because that's the question
that I that I sort of seefitting in. It's it's great to
hear Dave talking about as anairport looking forward to
implementing this on anairfield, because that's a good
testing environment. I feel likea lot of airport owners will
(16:35):
feel very challenged with thatstatement, because they think,
Well, if it doesn't work on theroads, why would I trust it
around both pedestrians andaircraft that are multi million
dollars to repair if they'rehit? So I think one of the
challenges to bringing this toan airport is getting the folks
who need to make the investmentready, you know, building that
(16:58):
trust and the confidence thatthis is the right solution. And
again, as a consultant, I'malways thinking, Well, I have to
solve a problem. I can't I can'tbring anything to the table if I
can't offer a solution to aproblem that they either already
have or don't know that theyhave, that can be solved. And
you know, maybe we can helpleverage technology, data, or in
(17:21):
this case, you know, autonomousvehicles, which right, should be
safer than you know, folks whomight be distracted have not got
enough sleep last night. So Ithink there is sort of the, can
we identify the low hangingfruit? So you talked about, you
worry about people driving outon the ramp. So how can we take
the kind of the pool of peopleand identify where's their
(17:44):
stress point? Maybe it's runninga bed from one gate to another
knowing that they're under thegun. So we let that be an
autonomous procedure, but theregular operations, you know,
your folks are well trained, andyou know, it's a well, well
oiled machine when they do thatprocess over and over again?
Yeah,
Matthew Weitzel (18:04):
I think that's an incredible answer. Brian, do
you know what challenges youforesee, like integrating
autonomous into your
Brian Wemple (18:10):
operation? Yeah, that's it's a good question.
It's a tough one, because there,it's always tough to talk about
the challenges, right? But Ithink in order to make sure that
you have a successful solutionimplemented, right? You've got
to identify those as best aspossible, try to mitigate the
risks associated with them. Youknow, I think for for us at
(18:31):
Piedmont, we're part of,obviously, a very large machine,
so to speak, right? And we havea lot of, you know, policies and
rules and a lot of stuff hasbeen built over time, right to
make sure that we have, youknow, as high level of safety as
possible. And so I think one ofthe biggest challenges, and this
(18:53):
is whether it's also the groundhandler, working with the
airport, working with regulatoryagencies, it's starting to kind
of try to rethink, you know, allthese different elements in
light of what we have availablepotentially here as new
technology to have theseproduction. Productive, I should
say, excuse me, productivereview of how do we implement
(19:15):
changes, because all of ourpolicies are written around
somebody like, say, being in avehicle, driving it. So how do
you rewrite the policies outthere to say, Okay, I'm gonna
you know somebody you know on aniPad or whatever is gonna
actually get this vehicle to gofrom point A to point B. And how
do we change how we handleairplanes to allow that to work?
(19:39):
And there's a lot of differentgroups involved in making this a
successful process, right? Eventoday, we'll talk about what we
have in place for rules,regulations and whatnot, so
getting different groupstogether and having the
productive conversations to tryto come up with. Solutions that
(20:00):
embrace, you know, what thistechnology can potentially do to
me, feels like probably one ofthe biggest challenges out
there, but certainly something Ithink that's achievable. And I
honestly think that this meetingtoday, this demonstration at the
airport, is probably a goodexample of what we can do in
(20:21):
order to try to start breakingdown some of those walls so
speak right and coming up withsolutions that are very
meaningful. See, you know, youtake baby steps, right? And this
seems like a really goodopportunity to kind of take one
of those first steps towardswhat the opportunity potentially
lies ahead, but definitelytrying to, in essence, rewrite
(20:41):
the playbook, right withbringing in this new technology,
for sure, it's going to be, Ithink, for us, would be one of
these challenges, yeah,
Matthew Weitzel (20:49):
what regulatory challenges do you think you'll
have? And who are thosechallenges come from?
Brian Wemple (20:54):
So that's good question. I think, generally
speaking, working on theairfield, we have federal
patients. I mean, we've got FAA,even potential, I don't know,
again, in thinking about it froma security perspective, I mean,
TSA, you know, obviously localairport authorities have control
over elements, so when we talkabout those particular
(21:15):
environments, right? We havealso on the company side, we've
got labor groups, right, that wehave to work with contractual
items that we have to review,and then just company policy,
right? One of the ways that weprovide a consistent, you know,
safe and reliable operation,then, is by teaching employees
to go step by step by step inthe process, right? And so now
(21:40):
all of a sudden we got to teachthe employees, okay, you've done
that this way. We taught you togo this way. Now, you know,
forget all that. Now, do thisway. Again, that way, right?
It's for one or the other,right? So I'm oversimplifying
it, but I mean, if you kind ofgive me, it's creating those new
processes right in place, andtraining folks on how to do
that. And then, you know, wetalked about reliability. So
(22:03):
what do we do if we have aproblem with a piece of
equipment, right? And so we haveto have pieces in place for
that. Can we fix it? You know,what's our back or fall back
plan? Because ultimately, if I'ma customer on an airplane, and
I'm flying from Greenville,Spartanburg to Albany, New York,
and as a customer, myexpectation is, is that my bag
travels with me, if I talk aboutspecifically luggage handling on
(22:25):
branch, so we can sit here andtell a customer, well, you know,
hey, look, sorry the autonomousvehicle had a fault. Yay,
autonomous vehicles. Butcustomers like, that's great.
I'm on the bag. So ultimately,we have to have steps in place
that can ensure that we cancontinue to form reliably, and
the technology could be 100% onespot, which is great, but we
(22:49):
don't have processes andtraining and, you know,
approvals and all that, thewhole that stuff, right? We have
we run that race, basically afailure customer, so and so
that's where we just have to bevery careful, right in terms of
implementation. That's, again,kind of is back to where I would
see probably one of the biggestchallenges that we have with
(23:09):
technology. You have
Matthew Weitzel (23:10):
another Marty, and we can kind of talk to him
about this,
Marty Gray (23:14):
but I mean outside, know, the physical factors of
such a vehicle operating. Howramp congested, ramp areas, you
know, it's a ramp for the best.
Is very, very dynamic. You know,there's always movement,
particularly in the hubs that weoperate in public Canada. But to
much bigger scale. On top ofthat is a change management
(23:37):
element to this. Again, when Ispoke about, you know, the
fundamental changes of how we'relooking to operate on the ramp
compared to how we've donepreviously. What was very
important to us, aside thesafeties and so on so forth. But
is that, is that employee buy inthat culture, not losing any
traction on that equallycritical is, you know, the
(23:58):
alignment of ourselves, orCanada in this, in this
position, to that of partnersthat are also looking to embrace
this, this sort of innovationyou spoke about, you know, GSPs,
you know, involvement receptionto, you know, essentially
providing a safe, controlledwork environment. I mean, that's
(24:21):
that's key, you know, even toget any sort of traction in
getting these into a deployablestate. So I think, from our
standpoint right now, to comeout of the gate, it's really
about that they'll lose sight ofthe development with our people,
and then align ourselves withthe appropriate partners to
embrace this and really geteverything out that it's
(24:44):
intended to do.
Matthew Weitzel (24:48):
Yeah, and I think events like this are
important for everybody to beable to kind of see that this
could work. And I think it'sreally important that we're here
today nobody can kind of seethis thing in action. So,
Reuben, what do you. See is likethe biggest challenges
Ruben Aradas (25:02):
for us. Some of the biggest challenges are when
you have to try to overcomeadversity, right? Whether it be
some software upgrade thatdisables the unit or causes it
to Malfunction. Malfunction,functions are always an issue,
right? How was the is thetechnology and the architecture
(25:23):
robust enough to withstand theweather, the temperature, the
humidity of the operation, atthe speed of the operation? I
mean, all those things occur,and then what happens is, let's
say the system shuts down. Let'ssay we have bad weather day, for
example, right? And you're notable to use the autonomous
(25:44):
vehicles because of the line ofsight or whatever, the
technology just doesn't work inthat weather condition. Now
you're left with putting peopleinto that vehicle. Are those
people going to be trained tooperate that vehicle, and has
their skill diminished over timebecause they haven't been in
that vehicle for a period oftime, right? So all those safety
(26:04):
concerns start to come up in badweather, right? So those are
things that you have to thinkthrough when you're when you're
adding this technology or thesetype of vehicles into your
operations. So those are, thoseare some of the big challenges
for us, and it's the people haveto understand how to deal with
(26:25):
these type of severe conditions,right? So if you don't have
people that are trained to actimmediately, right, it becomes
chaos, and the whole system justshuts down. So I think those are
some of the biggest challengesthat we're going to be faced
with. But when we started tointroduce this technology into
our operations,
Matthew Weitzel (26:44):
yeah, I'm excited to talk to track decent
today about that, because I knowthey've made some numerous
upgrades, even recently, inregards to weather, weather
coming in, and the way that thethe same offering those. So we
will discuss that later ontoday, and then you'll have a
chance to respond to that. Andthen, Dave, what do you see as a
challenge for the airport side?
Dave Edwards (27:05):
Yeah, I think there's probably a couple there.
You mentioned some of yourmentioned regulatory, you know,
trying to get the FAA on boardwith this is not always easy.
We've been playing in the realmof some automated, autonomous
mowing of grass as an example,which is a little closer to the
airfield. And these vehicleswill be running on the ramp, and
(27:27):
that's been a little problematicfor the FAA and trying to
convince them that we canimplement that type of a piece
of equipment in a safe andefficient way on the airfield.
So I think that'll be onevehicle can get past with those
guys, but I think we can get itdone. You know, I think the
discussion of how do youtransition from autonomous to a
(27:51):
person operating the vehicle isimportant, and I don't, I don't
want this to sound scary, butyou know, if you think back to
some of the struggles that havehappened in aviation over the
years. In particular, the onethat comes to mind for me was
the Asiana crash at SanFrancisco Airport several years
ago. You know, most foreignpilots, and figure in this case,
(28:12):
those pilots flying for Asianawere well trained, but they were
well trained, mostly inautomation, and so when they got
the alerts on final approachthat they had a problem. They
did not react fast enough totake over control of the
airplane and the aircraft.
Aircraft ended up crashing. Youknow, fortunately, on the crash
itself, there wasn't any loss oflife. There were. There was some
loss of life, and the responsethat happened by the fire
(28:35):
department, the officedepartment there at SFO, but I
think that is a key point is, ishaving people that don't, you
know, we can rely too much onautomation to the point that
when we need to step inmanually, because, let's face
it, equipment fails. I mean, itjust happens. You know, we
thought a little bit of whatthose two or three weeks ago, we
had CrowdStrike shut down theaviation system around the world
(28:58):
for several hours. At someairlines had a very difficult
time getting back online. So howdo those things impact this?
When we talk about technologyand autonomy and reliance on
those systems in order to runthese types of operations, I
think is really going to be keyas well. Yeah,
Matthew Weitzel (29:15):
I agree. Let's come back to down to Brian here,
and Brian, what specific tasksor operations do you think the
autonomous vehicle can handleeffectively is in your
operation? Yeah,
Brian Wemple (29:29):
we can have a lot of thoughts. I know we've talked
to Baptiste rich. I mean, I'veall tracked busy team about this
for a number of years. I was atrade show probably five years
ago, we were in the autonomousshuttle personnel shuttle,
right? So we've had this on ourmind for a number of years, for
sure, and we have looked atdifferent options that we've
(29:54):
had. I mean, there's, there'sdefinitely a lot of potential
opportunity, and I think some ofthe. Points being made about
that balance of having workersready to work the operation
compared to having autonomousequipment available. Generally
speaking, I feel like autonomousvehicles really are a great
(30:16):
opportunity to invest andsupplement what you're doing in
the operation. So as we talkthrough this, and I think about
it, I think at least for us, youknow, I really see this as an
opportunity to bringopportunities and to supplement
what we're doing today. So somuch to say, like here in
Greenville, Spartanburg, maybe,you know, for one outbound
flight, we run our bags withperson, and then the next
(30:38):
Outbound Flight runs with anautonomous vehicle, and then we
can flip it around. So banksgoing from a tail for an
arriving flight could be runwith an autonomous vehicle on
one and then it could be with aperson another. So it kind of a
concept of mixing it up. May bea good opportunity there to
introduce, you know, theopportunity for efficiencies.
When I think about staffinglevels at an airport, it's
(30:59):
highly dependent on how manyairplanes you have on the ground
at a given time. And so airlinescheduling, unfortunately, is
one where we're trying tomaximize, obviously,
profitability in the market, butsometimes that means flight
schedules will get what we callpeaked, where we have 20 flights
a day. I'm just using randomnumbers here for GSP, but at
(31:20):
those 20 flights today, youmight have four of them on the
ground right at the same time.
They're not evenly spread out.
And so when we talked aboutintroducing autonomous vehicles
in the operation, well we knowwe're never going to not have
any staff at an airport, right?
And so for us, what we see is,when you have those four flights
a day, can you have the time youcome in and basically reduce the
burden versus us having to bringmore labor in to cover, in
(31:44):
essence, what would be, what Iwould say like a short peak,
right? And so when we talk aboutopportunity, it's really about
trying to kind of normalize thelabor requirement of a given
operation by bringing in, youknow, the autonomous type
equipment that would allow us torationalize, you know, the peak
demands of the operation. Andthat's a benefit, not only in
(32:05):
schedule operation, but also offschedule operations. I know GSP
is a proud crowd that's is arecipient of a lot of diverting
flights. Right? Come from fromlike Charlotte or Atlanta, and
they can't land there theyappear. And so that would be
another good example of offschedule operations where we
don't expect to have airplaneshere, we have a plan for them,
(32:27):
then all of a sudden they'rehere, right? And if we have
reliable, autonomous solutionsthat could help us manage those
types of unplanned activity,that would also provide a lot of
benefit in the operation.
Obviously, we're looking atluggage tractors. So, I mean,
we're talking about theopportunity of moving luggage,
you know, around the airports.
That's what we kind of looked atright now. And so, I mean,
(32:48):
there's, there's obviously a lotof activity there with that, but
there's the potential in thefuture also to look at other
functions of the operation, suchas, you know, aircraft for
chefs, right? What's to say thatwe can't have a autonomous
vehicle performing that functionof actually pushing the aircraft
back from the gate? So andagain, it's a it's a demand that
(33:09):
exists in the operation. And Ithink in an airport environment,
there's a lot of opportunity tokind of control how that
function would occur, becauseramps right, being, you know,
location of the geographic, youknow, limitations, whatever it's
you have a lot of control in anairport environment, and so it
does provide a lot of potentialopportunity for that type of
(33:32):
stuff. So those are just someexamples of things that we've
seen or thought about lookingforward. Okay, and
Matthew Weitzel (33:39):
Marty, would you like to respond
Marty Gray (33:41):
much like you just said, you know, all that same
like opportunity, right? Yeah. Imean, we will, we will look to
deploy such technology andinnovation in areas where
there's opportunity, and wedon't know, but internally we
don't know. We're too immature,yeah, for this at this time. But
what I can tell you is, youknow, based on the conversations
that we've had thus far, andthose who we have speak, been
(34:03):
speaking with for do createopportunity. It's point to
point. You know, I don't want tomake this more complex than it
needs to be to get right, butsimple touch time, point to
point, off the tail, onto acart, to a carousel, right? This
gets to a place where we canstart measuring let's start
looking at safety. Let's startlooking at performance. Start
(34:26):
small, but I can tell you, I'malso going into this with no, no
finish line, if you will. Iwould love to already start
thinking about pushing backaircraft with similar type
technology. I mean, this is areality of what we're doing
right now, but starting smalland getting it right, getting it
valued. When you talk about theinside operations of our cargo
(34:51):
warehousing, I mean, I see thatalready being doable, given that
we're seeing it in otherindustries, doing it in a
production. Or a facilitymanufacturing type application.
So I didn't see any reason whywe couldn't deploy something
like that in our cargooperations today. Again, taking
a step back to make sure that weget, you know, the kit, the
(35:12):
culture, employing, buy in, thecommunication, and these are all
things that, you know, I feel weneed to have softly in place
before we just go to deployment.
But for us, you know, we'rethinking, really, I feel like
we're thinking really, reallybig to the point, yeah, that,
you know, there's a realattraction to be one day pushing
back aircraft with with thissort of technology.
Matthew Weitzel (35:34):
Yep. And then Ruben, does this look like a
little bit easier for a cargocarrier?
Ruben Aradas (35:40):
Well, we don't see a an autonomous cargo tracker,
for example, as something thatwould be easier for us. You
know, we're more interested insome of the things that we may
talk about later, and some ofthe the the material that you
received today, where anautonomous dolly makes more
sense to us, right? Like I said,Time is our enemy. Every minute
(36:04):
that we can get back helps ourcustomer. So we need to find a
way to get that time back, andwe think that autonomous dollies
is the way to do that. We canmove one dolly at a time. We
could network the dollies to gowherever they want and get them
there much quicker than we canpulling three containers at a
time with a tuff right? Becausetypically what happens in our
(36:25):
operation is we have to wait forthose containers to be loaded.
So if the first one is loaded,it can't go anywhere until the
last one is loaded, and so thatvolume just sits there until all
of the containers are ready togo, and then they get moved out
to the aircraft. Whereas if wewere able to move one valley at
a time, we're able to get someof that time back. If we were to
(36:47):
just get a minute back, or 30seconds, and we got to load an
airplane that's got 30containers in it, do the math,
you know, that's 30 minutes or15 minutes that you get back in
just that amount of time.
Matthew Weitzel (37:00):
Terry Do you want to Terry real quick? So
will there be any structuralchanges that need to be made to
accommodate autonomous vehicles?
Terry Seaworth (37:09):
That's a good question. So right? The
difference differences betweenautonomous vehicles and people
driving them, of course, the youknow, charging stations or
depots for maybe immediatestorage points for baggage or
cargo, you know, while they waitfor a different tug to pick them
up or to be to be groupedtogether in another in a
(37:30):
different order to go to theirdestination. I do feel like an
airport would probably need toconsider how the ramp space is
used. Do autonomous vehiclesneed more space to turn around
and queue, or less space. Soyes, I do think there wouldn't
have to be some some sort ofstructural changes to
(37:50):
accommodate autonomous thedifferences between autonomous
vehicles and the way that we ashumans drive drive vehicles. I
think, though, there's theadvantage to having the
additional technology and datawould outweigh those
modifications. So the fact thatan autonomous vehicle can have
knowledge of the entire systemat any given point in time and
(38:13):
know how many bags are yetexpected to be loaded onto that
flight, or perhaps in thefuture, they would even know the
weight of the bags and thatcould feed to the weights and
measurements calculations thatthe pilot has to make. I feel
like, you know, as somebodymentioned, baby steps, this kind
of being the first step of manyto get us more information, more
(38:33):
data and more efficiency to theoperation.
Matthew Weitzel (38:36):
That's a great answer. Yeah, I appreciate that.
So I think this is probablygoing to be the last question. I
think we have really kind ofgone over a lot today. But so
what are you going to be lookingfor today from the demo like,
what will you what will youreyes be focused on? What we'd be
looking at and what's importantto you? I
Terry Seaworth (38:52):
hope I know, but you might answer a lot of
questions. But you know, ofcourse, the demonstration like
this, I really appreciate allthe energy that's gone into it,
but I actually have questionsfrom my colleagues who are very
interested, but couldn'tparticipate today, about
weather, which has already beenkind of discussed operationally,
some of the things that weexpect autonomous vehicles to do
(39:14):
well. And then, you know, whereare their shortcomings? Where
are we going to have to fit thehuman component back into the
operation. You know, trainingwas a really good one. How do we
train people now to work aroundautonomous vehicles? What do
they need to expect? What dothey need to do in response? So,
(39:34):
yes, I definitely planning toask a
Matthew Weitzel (39:36):
lot to push.
For sure. Yes, all right, Brian,what
Dave Edwards (39:39):
are you going to be looking for
Brian Wemple (39:41):
today? I think talking with rich yesterday, and
he volunteered to demonstratethe collision avoidance rates on
the vehicle. So he's going tostand in front of one and make
sure it stops. I think this ismy first opportunity to actually
see this particular vehicle inthe. In the operation at Newark,
we talked about the bunch. So Ithink it's, you know, a kid with
(40:06):
a brand new, like, game consoleor something that's like,
Matthew Weitzel (40:11):
don't either wide open, like, Okay, wow.
Where we, you know,
Brian Wemple (40:13):
what do we even, you know, they don't even know
what they're stepping into,right? Because it's so exciting.
There's so much potential. Ithink that's just that just
trying to absorb as much aspossible about what we can
observe learn with theequipment, and then take that
knowledge that we learned todayand then just start thinking
more about getting what can wedo with it? What are the
(40:35):
questions? Where do we need tokind of investigate further? So
it's really for us, just part ofthe journey of learning more.
And again, I think for today,it's just learn as much as we
can working with folks here inthis meeting and just
collaborate, obviously, andlearn from each other, and then
use it to work with the productdesigners manufacturers, to say,
(41:01):
Hey, these are events. How do wego make this work? Yeah,
Matthew Weitzel (41:04):
exactly. All right. Marty, yeah,
Marty Gray (41:06):
just in John, just I'm excited to see it for all
the conversations and meetings,drawings, pamphlets I've looked
at, oh, this. It's time to seeit. That's where we're at. And
then see it, touch it, feel it.
And I know that that's, youknow, that will drive all kinds
of conversations for our triphome and answering some of these
(41:27):
questions for ourselves. Youknow, hey, now that you seen it,
what does opportunity look like?
You know, it'll, it'll, it'lljust answer a lot of questions
on ourselves. Yeah, I'm excitedto see it.
Ruben Aradas (41:39):
Yeah, yeah. For us, we've actually had the
opportunity to do some demos atour major gateway in Louisville,
and when we started thosedemonstrations, we knew right
away that the technology justwasn't ready. So that's what
we're going to be looking for.
You know, are you bringing afinished product to the
(42:00):
operation, right? And does itoperate reliably? Does it
operate without errors? Or theword we don't like to use,
failure? And what questions aregoing to come up? Right? There's
going to be lots of questions.
How does it operate on aninfield? What happens when
there's a change? When youchange the operating
(42:23):
environment, if you're makingright turns all the time, and
all of a sudden now you got tomake left turns. What happens to
that vehicle? If you have tochange or they new facility, new
building goes up, what happensto the travel path of that
vehicle as structures get in itsway as construction takes place
at an airport, right? Whathappens to to the vehicle when
(42:46):
all of these things arechallenging its ability to
operate? So that's, that's whatwe're going to be looking for,
is what, what you questions,what, where, how the innovation
has improved right over the lastfew years from when we did our
testing, that's what we're goingto be looking for. Okay,
Dave Edwards (43:05):
I think for the airport, you know, we want to,
really want to see how all ofyou in this room respond to
technology that's here and mepresented today. And I think
we're just scratching thesurface still on this, lots of
questions to be answered. Youdon't know what we don't know at
this point, until you see itrolled out in the operating
(43:26):
environment, we're going tocontinue to learn, and that's
what we have to do from this.
But I think that's whereautonomous vehicles can help us
with that. So I'm excited to seethe response today, see the
vehicle in operation again, andthen just Garner feedback from
this group as to what you thinkthe opportunities are in your
operations. My team will beevaluating it. From our
(43:49):
perspective, cargo operation,what we do here on the airport,
but I'm really interested tohear from a lot of the folks in
this room as to what theirconcerns are or and hopefully a
lot of excitement after wefinish things. Today's day,
Matthew Weitzel (44:04):
well, let's give our panelists a big round
of applause.
Thank you for tuning in to thisepisode of the GSE podcast. We
hope you found it informativeand engaging. If this episode
resonated with you, please shareit with your colleagues and
(44:26):
peers in the ground supportequipment community, your
support is invaluable to us.
We'd appreciate it if you couldtake a moment to rate and review
our podcast. Your feedback notonly encourages us, but also
helps expand our reach withinthe GSE community. Keep an eye
out for more episodes as wecontinue to explore the dynamic
world of ground operations,bringing you the latest trends,
insights and stories from theindustry. Thank you for
(44:49):
listening to the GSE podcastuntil we meet again. Stay
grounded and keep pushingforward. You.
Music,
Matthew Weitzel (00:07):
celebrating 10 years of trailblazing in ground
support Xcēd marks a decade asyour leading partner in ground
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(00:27):
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Terry Seaworth (00:56):
this is Laura McGrath,
Unknown (00:57):
this is Jennifer Mattison.
Terry Seaworth (00:59):
This is Sophie Skinner Jones and you are
listening to the GSE podcast,all right. Well,
Matthew Weitzel (01:05):
good morning.
I'm Matt Weitzel.
I'm with Matt with Xcēd groundsupport equipment leasing, and
host of the GSE podcast. So Idon't know if you all are
listeners or not. Me should haveto check us out on all the major
platforms. And today, we're hereto talk about, you know,
integrating autonomous vehiclesinto an airport environment. And
(01:26):
to help me out with that, I havea full host of people here,
panelists that are going to helpme, because they are much
smarter than I am, and they'regoing to help help us really
kind of dive into this topic.
All right, so the firstquestion, Terry, you're up. So
what excites you most aboutpotential autonomous vehicles in
your operations? So I work,you're not, you're not an
(01:49):
operator, but yeah, I mean,you're, yeah, I
Terry Seaworth (01:52):
was gonna say airport, right? Airport
consulting, yeah. And, you know,I think for for any airport, you
have to look at what's going tosolve a problem. So for
airports, I would say there arepinch points or bottlenecks in
the baggage handling processthat could be improved by an
efficient system that willtransfer bags from point to
(02:15):
point. When it's labor intensiveto gather a few bags here, a few
bags there. I would also saythere's an opportunity to
improve customer service. So,you know, an autonomous system
that can prevent or minimize thenumber of loss or missing bags
would be a huge boon to both theairlines and then the airport
(02:37):
itself. Yeah,
Matthew Weitzel (02:38):
for sure. All right, you okay, down to Brian
there. You guys introduceyourself. Oh, you know, we
should definitely introduction,sorry. So Terry, Terry. HNTB,
right. So um, if you tell uswhat you do? HNTB, sure.
Terry Seaworth (02:52):
Terry Seaworth, HNTB, I um. HNTB, does
transportation consulting. Ispecifically have worked in
aviation for the last 25 years,I do program and construction
management for airports who arelooking to expand their
infrastructure.
Brian Wemple (03:08):
Brian, good morning. Folks. Start with the
introduction, I guess so. Myname is Brian Wemple pulling
with the few moderator linesI've been since two live and I'm
sure the but I actually justcelebrated my 25 year
anniversary with Piedmont lastweek. So I've been doing this
for a little while, or somewould say, probably too long,
(03:28):
but actually started as a groundservice employee in Tallahassee
back in 1999 was a fun job whenI was in college, and I've
worked my way up. Right now, I'ma director we're seeing planning
for Piedmont, obviously, GSEprocurement. GSE projects is one
of my passions, and one thatI've worked on for many years,
(03:51):
and not to direct sound toolong. When back it was 22,009
2010 we were looking atCharlotte, one of our largest
actually, it is our largestoperation, where we do ground
handling and just handling. Andjust for clarity, Piedmont is an
airline that's owned by AmericanAirlines, and we fly airplanes
and we also provide groundhandling services. Piedmont has
(04:12):
ground handling in should bearound 65 locations across the
US. Our largest operation is inCharlotte. We have a large
operation Philadelphia. One ofmy counterparts, Mr. Zavala, is
a rent manager in Philadelphia,is with us. So we've got
probably around 8000 groundhandling employees across our
(04:33):
system, so pretty good breadthof different work scopes that we
have in our airports. We run theground up for American here at
GSP. And so while as you talk abit more about the project, I
think as we move it through, butagain, just to give you a little
bit of a background here, as wetalk to the panel questions,
let's see where was I going withthis Charlotte being our largest
(04:56):
operation, back in 2010 we.
Embarked on a project that wasback when grain technology was
really kind of coming into thespotlight. We were looking at
different opportunities ofprogram with different entities,
but we made the choice to go saywe want to bring electric
tractors into the operation.
(05:17):
That was US Airways at the time.
For those you know the history,obviously US Airways merged with
American so at US Airways, thatwas the first time that program
handling entity, I made thechoice to go electric versus,
say, like a regular, regularregulatory entity, something is
forcing it to happen, and we'venever looked back since we
brought the electric tractorsinto the operation. We did a lot
(05:39):
of work, planning, preparing,the employee groups, the
maintenance groups, and it was abeautiful project. And we
probably have just probablyaround 70, 6070, electric
tractors. We got a fleet of 40some electric pushbacks. I mean,
the sky has been limited there.
(05:59):
I still let this you know, fromour perspective at Piedmont, and
I think across America as awhole, there's absolutely a
desire to try to branch out andin the right way, explore and
implement new technologies thatreally make the operation
better. And it's really apartnership with, you know, our
employee groups, and also withyou know, airport groups as
(06:21):
well, to make sure that we canmake this work well. And so we
look forward to the potentialthat we have with this product.
We're very interested in tryingto create a product for our
customers, and our customersbeing airline customers, and
also American Airlines, weprimarily service and providing
(06:43):
a safe and reliable product.
When we think about safe andreliable technologies like the
track easy project is is onewhere we definitely see a lot of
potential future opportunity.
Matthew Weitzel (06:56):
That's fantastic. Thank you so much.
And Marty beat thatintroduction,
Marty Gray (07:01):
all right, I
Brian Wemple (07:01):
might have taken everybody's time.
Marty Gray (07:05):
Good morning. I'm Marty Gray. I am Air Canada
director for ground supportequipment and maintenance, like
yourself, Brian, I've beenaround for quite some time. I'm
in my 27th year now with AirCanada technical by trade, and
here I am ultimately responsiblefor for what we do in our Canada
(07:26):
underground support side. Sothanks for having me. Oh, thank
Matthew Weitzel (07:29):
you so much.
Brian Wemple (07:31):
Good
Dave Edwards (07:31):
morning, everyone.
Ruben Aradas (07:32):
My name is Ruben Aradas. I work with UPS for
about 32 years. Currently, I'mretired, so how about a better
path to to my future, right? ButI did spend six, six of those 32
years with the UPS Airlines,managing their ground support
(07:53):
engineering department, and I'llkeep it short, just so that we
can move this along.
Brian Wemple (07:58):
Thanks. In the morning, I
Dave Edwards (08:01):
think I already made an introduction this
morning, although I feel likemorning, although I feel like
they'll land on the stagebecause I've got 35 plus years
in the airport business. Soobviously, you guys, some of you
guys, got a little ways to go.
You know, as I mentioned at theairport here, we're all about
innovation customer service. Howdo we improve things? You know,
it's servicing our customershere at GSP, and since we do do
things a little different thanmost airports around the
(08:22):
country, and engage in businessmodels that most airports don't
do, like cargo handling as anexample, and we do some
passenger charter handling aswell, and some airports do that
around the country, but we wejust really want to engage in
things that are going to improvethe overall level of service to
our customers here at GSP. Sowe're excited about any time
(08:43):
that we can bring new technologyto the table that helps us do
that. Yeah, for sure.
Marty Gray (08:49):
All right, let's,
Matthew Weitzel (08:50):
let's pass it back to Brian here. Let's, let's
give Brian's opinion on so whatexcites the most about potential
autonomous vehicles in youroperations? Yeah, absolutely. I
Brian Wemple (08:59):
try to try to keep it a little shorter. Going
forward, I was trying to do twoanswers, introduction and
answering the original question.
So but really, to piggyback offwhat I said earlier, it's the
excitement, I think is reallyabout the opportunities that are
presented with a vehicle likethis. I think everybody knows
what exists out there on themarket today, obviously on road
vehicles, and the understandingof what they're capable of
(09:23):
doing, what the potential isdown the road for those
vehicles. And so we look atthat, and we look at the airport
environment, we are thinking,Okay, now we got a situation
where we have probably even amore control environment than
what you have like on road, andtaking some of those
opportunities you have from theperspective of safety and also,
of course, efficiency, bringingthose elements into the airport
(09:45):
environment. How many guys havedriven on the airport ramp
before, especially if a lot youknow, around a lot of different
airplanes, right? Same time?
Charlotte airport is one thatI've driven on the ramp many
times Philadelphia. Never drivenin Philly, but I think Dave is
probably. Driven me in Phillybefore you realize really
quickly how much risk actuallyexists in the operation, right?
(10:08):
And you know, the folks that wehave working on the tarmac, you
know, we have a lot of greatfolks that have been doing it
for a lot of years. We all havefolks they've been doing it for
a very short period of time. Andyou put those folks out there,
it's an over hacking guys, Imean, and so when we talk about
safety and we talk about theopportunities that we can bring
equipment into the operationthat can increase that level
(10:31):
through technology, you know,again, it's something where we
should definitely be looking atthis. We're silly for not
looking at it, because it'ssomething that, you know, I
don't sound extreme, but I mean,it's something that could
potentially save a life, right?
And so it's important to us. Andso I think this is a really
good, structured way in doingthis type of review of the
(10:52):
technology in order to get tothat point where we can have,
you know, effective potentialrollouts in the future, and so
really safety, obviously,efficiency, and I think to a
certain extent, reliability aswell. So I think those would be
the three top things that I'd belooking forward to with this
type of technology.
Matthew Weitzel (11:12):
That's great answer, Marty, do you want to
you and talk about what kind ofexcites you about the autonomous
Sure.
Marty Gray (11:18):
I mean, the excitement for me is really the
unknown, right? If you look at,you know, what has come into our
industry over the last couple ofyears, I mean, the potential to
operate fundamentally differentthan we ever had before is
ponds, if you look whatelectrification in itself has
brought, and then, you know,really fast forward, a lot of
(11:39):
technology for aircraft damagemitigation, the you know, the
employees safety, essentiallythe safety of our people, our
facilities, our assets, so on,so forth. This whole lot of
fundamental change. And I thinknow that we're starting to talk
(11:59):
about autonomous vehicles. Airside, like this is a huge, huge
opportunity. That's how we seeit. You know, the performance
side is certainly one thing whenyou talk about reliability for
delivering bags point to point.
But how do we operate on a ramp?
You know, this is, this is whatexcites me. It's right now. It
said it's, it's unknown on onthe autonomous side, but we see
(12:24):
really bearing fruit in othermarkets. On it industries. It's
very, very evident that it's,it's going to be successful in
in an airport suburb. Yeah, I
Matthew Weitzel (12:33):
agree. Yeah.
Let's, let's talk to Ruben, eventhough you're retired Reb, and
I'm sure you have plenty, plentyof great ideas here. Yeah.
Ruben Aradas (12:41):
I mean, we view autonomy. We think that there's
three key benefits to autonomy,right? The first one is to
improve safety, right? Whodoesn't want to improve safety?
We also see it as increasing theefficiency of the operation. For
us, time is our enemy in thecargo business, right? Every
(13:03):
minute matters to us, and anyminute we can save is beneficial
to our on time performance. Andthen the third thing, I would
say, is reduction andmaintenance cost, right? So when
you put all, all three of thosethings together, you know you're
getting a better way ofgenerating revenue and profit
(13:26):
because you're not having to tomaintain you're improving the
safety and you're increasing theoperational efficiency of of the
work that's being done. Sothere's other things that also
benefit from autonomy. We talkedabout electric vehicles. So
sustainability comes into that.
And I think what the theelephant in the room is, is to
(13:47):
at some point offset labor,right? Because that's really
where much of the cost saving isgoing to come from.
Matthew Weitzel (13:56):
So Ruben broke away about it. She want to ask
you something, so why do youthink the cost of maintenance
will go down with an autonomousvehicle. Well,
Ruben Aradas (14:03):
if you work at UPS, we know how to destroy
equipment. There's a lot moreplay on ramp. I don't know how
much money we spend on paint andtouch up from scratching
equipment damaging equipment. Ifyou've ever seen an aircraft
maintenance pickup truck after ayear, it looks like it should go
to the junk pile, right? So wethink we're going to be able to
(14:24):
eliminate a lot of thatunnecessary maintenance to the
equipment. And you know, thevehicles are driving themselves,
like a grandfather would drivehis car, right? It takes care of
itself. It performs to theoptimal level, but at the same
time, including the reliabilityof that piece of equipment.
Matthew Weitzel (14:45):
Okay, thank you. That's a great answer, or
you can hand it down to Davethere.
Dave Edwards (14:50):
Yeah, I don't know that I can really add a whole
lot to what's what we said downthe panel. I mean, safety,
reliability, cost reductions inthe future. I mean all of those
things are. Important again tous here at the district, as I
mentioned, because we do run ourown cargo operation. In
particular, I think the key, andthis was mentioned earlier as
well, is there's no better placeto test this kind of technology
(15:13):
than on an airport in acontrolled environment. And I
say that as I mentioned duringmy opening remarks, that we've
been delving in for the last1113, years, automated slash
autonomous movement ofpassengers, and some of that
discussion that revolved aroundmixed traffic, autonomous
vehicles, and I just don'tbelieve that's there yet. It's
(15:33):
not going to be there for quitesome time. While. We have some
companies out here around thecountry, like Waymo, who are
running in Phoenix and a fewother places. The reality, at
the end of the day is it's stillvery much in its infancy. So I
think dedicated areas, anyonewe're going to put it in place
here, from a passenger movementperspective, it would be
dedicated right of ways thatcontrolled environment on the
(15:56):
airfield is really conducive totry to move forward with tests
with this technology and accruethat it simply can be effective
and that it will be effectiveforce in the future. Okay,
Matthew Weitzel (16:06):
you want to hand the mic back down to the
Terry here. So, Terry, whatchallenges do you foresee
integrating autonomous vehiclesinto an airport? Well,
Terry Seaworth (16:15):
I was, I was actually going to ask if I could
respond to what Dave just saw,no, because that's the question
that I that I sort of seefitting in. It's it's great to
hear Dave talking about as anairport looking forward to
implementing this on anairfield, because that's a good
testing environment. I feel likea lot of airport owners will
(16:35):
feel very challenged with thatstatement, because they think,
Well, if it doesn't work on theroads, why would I trust it
around both pedestrians andaircraft that are multi million
dollars to repair if they'rehit? So I think one of the
challenges to bringing this toan airport is getting the folks
who need to make the investmentready, you know, building that
(16:58):
trust and the confidence thatthis is the right solution. And
again, as a consultant, I'malways thinking, Well, I have to
solve a problem. I can't I can'tbring anything to the table if I
can't offer a solution to aproblem that they either already
have or don't know that theyhave, that can be solved. And
you know, maybe we can helpleverage technology, data, or in
(17:21):
this case, you know, autonomousvehicles, which right, should be
safer than you know, folks whomight be distracted have not got
enough sleep last night. So Ithink there is sort of the, can
we identify the low hangingfruit? So you talked about, you
worry about people driving outon the ramp. So how can we take
the kind of the pool of peopleand identify where's their
(17:44):
stress point? Maybe it's runninga bed from one gate to another
knowing that they're under thegun. So we let that be an
autonomous procedure, but theregular operations, you know,
your folks are well trained, andyou know, it's a well, well
oiled machine when they do thatprocess over and over again?
Yeah,
Matthew Weitzel (18:04):
I think that's an incredible answer. Brian, do
you know what challenges youforesee, like integrating
autonomous into your
Brian Wemple (18:10):
operation? Yeah, that's it's a good question.
It's a tough one, because there,it's always tough to talk about
the challenges, right? But Ithink in order to make sure that
you have a successful solutionimplemented, right? You've got
to identify those as best aspossible, try to mitigate the
risks associated with them. Youknow, I think for for us at
(18:31):
Piedmont, we're part of,obviously, a very large machine,
so to speak, right? And we havea lot of, you know, policies and
rules and a lot of stuff hasbeen built over time, right to
make sure that we have, youknow, as high level of safety as
possible. And so I think one ofthe biggest challenges, and this
(18:53):
is whether it's also the groundhandler, working with the
airport, working with regulatoryagencies, it's starting to kind
of try to rethink, you know, allthese different elements in
light of what we have availablepotentially here as new
technology to have theseproduction. Productive, I should
say, excuse me, productivereview of how do we implement
(19:15):
changes, because all of ourpolicies are written around
somebody like, say, being in avehicle, driving it. So how do
you rewrite the policies outthere to say, Okay, I'm gonna
you know somebody you know on aniPad or whatever is gonna
actually get this vehicle to gofrom point A to point B. And how
do we change how we handleairplanes to allow that to work?
(19:39):
And there's a lot of differentgroups involved in making this a
successful process, right? Eventoday, we'll talk about what we
have in place for rules,regulations and whatnot, so
getting different groupstogether and having the
productive conversations to tryto come up with. Solutions that
(20:00):
embrace, you know, what thistechnology can potentially do to
me, feels like probably one ofthe biggest challenges out
there, but certainly something Ithink that's achievable. And I
honestly think that this meetingtoday, this demonstration at the
airport, is probably a goodexample of what we can do in
(20:21):
order to try to start breakingdown some of those walls so
speak right and coming up withsolutions that are very
meaningful. See, you know, youtake baby steps, right? And this
seems like a really goodopportunity to kind of take one
of those first steps towardswhat the opportunity potentially
lies ahead, but definitelytrying to, in essence, rewrite
(20:41):
the playbook, right withbringing in this new technology,
for sure, it's going to be, Ithink, for us, would be one of
these challenges, yeah,
Matthew Weitzel (20:49):
what regulatory challenges do you think you'll
have? And who are thosechallenges come from?
Brian Wemple (20:54):
So that's good question. I think, generally
speaking, working on theairfield, we have federal
patients. I mean, we've got FAA,even potential, I don't know,
again, in thinking about it froma security perspective, I mean,
TSA, you know, obviously localairport authorities have control
over elements, so when we talkabout those particular
(21:15):
environments, right? We havealso on the company side, we've
got labor groups, right, that wehave to work with contractual
items that we have to review,and then just company policy,
right? One of the ways that weprovide a consistent, you know,
safe and reliable operation,then, is by teaching employees
to go step by step by step inthe process, right? And so now
(21:40):
all of a sudden we got to teachthe employees, okay, you've done
that this way. We taught you togo this way. Now, you know,
forget all that. Now, do thisway. Again, that way, right?
It's for one or the other,right? So I'm oversimplifying
it, but I mean, if you kind ofgive me, it's creating those new
processes right in place, andtraining folks on how to do
that. And then, you know, wetalked about reliability. So
(22:03):
what do we do if we have aproblem with a piece of
equipment, right? And so we haveto have pieces in place for
that. Can we fix it? You know,what's our back or fall back
plan? Because ultimately, if I'ma customer on an airplane, and
I'm flying from Greenville,Spartanburg to Albany, New York,
and as a customer, myexpectation is, is that my bag
travels with me, if I talk aboutspecifically luggage handling on
(22:25):
branch, so we can sit here andtell a customer, well, you know,
hey, look, sorry the autonomousvehicle had a fault. Yay,
autonomous vehicles. Butcustomers like, that's great.
I'm on the bag. So ultimately,we have to have steps in place
that can ensure that we cancontinue to form reliably, and
the technology could be 100% onespot, which is great, but we
(22:49):
don't have processes andtraining and, you know,
approvals and all that, thewhole that stuff, right? We have
we run that race, basically afailure customer, so and so
that's where we just have to bevery careful, right in terms of
implementation. That's, again,kind of is back to where I would
see probably one of the biggestchallenges that we have with
(23:09):
technology. You have
Matthew Weitzel (23:10):
another Marty, and we can kind of talk to him
about this,
Marty Gray (23:14):
but I mean outside, know, the physical factors of
such a vehicle operating. Howramp congested, ramp areas, you
know, it's a ramp for the best.
Is very, very dynamic. You know,there's always movement,
particularly in the hubs that weoperate in public Canada. But to
much bigger scale. On top ofthat is a change management
(23:37):
element to this. Again, when Ispoke about, you know, the
fundamental changes of how we'relooking to operate on the ramp
compared to how we've donepreviously. What was very
important to us, aside thesafeties and so on so forth. But
is that, is that employee buy inthat culture, not losing any
traction on that equallycritical is, you know, the
(23:58):
alignment of ourselves, orCanada in this, in this
position, to that of partnersthat are also looking to embrace
this, this sort of innovationyou spoke about, you know, GSPs,
you know, involvement receptionto, you know, essentially
providing a safe, controlledwork environment. I mean, that's
(24:21):
that's key, you know, even toget any sort of traction in
getting these into a deployablestate. So I think, from our
standpoint right now, to comeout of the gate, it's really
about that they'll lose sight ofthe development with our people,
and then align ourselves withthe appropriate partners to
embrace this and really geteverything out that it's
(24:44):
intended to do.
Matthew Weitzel (24:48):
Yeah, and I think events like this are
important for everybody to beable to kind of see that this
could work. And I think it'sreally important that we're here
today nobody can kind of seethis thing in action. So,
Reuben, what do you. See is likethe biggest challenges
Ruben Aradas (25:02):
for us. Some of the biggest challenges are when
you have to try to overcomeadversity, right? Whether it be
some software upgrade thatdisables the unit or causes it
to Malfunction. Malfunction,functions are always an issue,
right? How was the is thetechnology and the architecture
(25:23):
robust enough to withstand theweather, the temperature, the
humidity of the operation, atthe speed of the operation? I
mean, all those things occur,and then what happens is, let's
say the system shuts down. Let'ssay we have bad weather day, for
example, right? And you're notable to use the autonomous
(25:44):
vehicles because of the line ofsight or whatever, the
technology just doesn't work inthat weather condition. Now
you're left with putting peopleinto that vehicle. Are those
people going to be trained tooperate that vehicle, and has
their skill diminished over timebecause they haven't been in
that vehicle for a period oftime, right? So all those safety
(26:04):
concerns start to come up in badweather, right? So those are
things that you have to thinkthrough when you're when you're
adding this technology or thesetype of vehicles into your
operations. So those are, thoseare some of the big challenges
for us, and it's the people haveto understand how to deal with
(26:25):
these type of severe conditions,right? So if you don't have
people that are trained to actimmediately, right, it becomes
chaos, and the whole system justshuts down. So I think those are
some of the biggest challengesthat we're going to be faced
with. But when we started tointroduce this technology into
our operations,
Matthew Weitzel (26:44):
yeah, I'm excited to talk to track decent
today about that, because I knowthey've made some numerous
upgrades, even recently, inregards to weather, weather
coming in, and the way that thethe same offering those. So we
will discuss that later ontoday, and then you'll have a
chance to respond to that. Andthen, Dave, what do you see as a
challenge for the airport side?
Dave Edwards (27:05):
Yeah, I think there's probably a couple there.
You mentioned some of yourmentioned regulatory, you know,
trying to get the FAA on boardwith this is not always easy.
We've been playing in the realmof some automated, autonomous
mowing of grass as an example,which is a little closer to the
airfield. And these vehicleswill be running on the ramp, and
(27:27):
that's been a little problematicfor the FAA and trying to
convince them that we canimplement that type of a piece
of equipment in a safe andefficient way on the airfield.
So I think that'll be onevehicle can get past with those
guys, but I think we can get itdone. You know, I think the
discussion of how do youtransition from autonomous to a
(27:51):
person operating the vehicle isimportant, and I don't, I don't
want this to sound scary, butyou know, if you think back to
some of the struggles that havehappened in aviation over the
years. In particular, the onethat comes to mind for me was
the Asiana crash at SanFrancisco Airport several years
ago. You know, most foreignpilots, and figure in this case,
(28:12):
those pilots flying for Asianawere well trained, but they were
well trained, mostly inautomation, and so when they got
the alerts on final approachthat they had a problem. They
did not react fast enough totake over control of the
airplane and the aircraft.
Aircraft ended up crashing. Youknow, fortunately, on the crash
itself, there wasn't any loss oflife. There were. There was some
loss of life, and the responsethat happened by the fire
(28:35):
department, the officedepartment there at SFO, but I
think that is a key point is, ishaving people that don't, you
know, we can rely too much onautomation to the point that
when we need to step inmanually, because, let's face
it, equipment fails. I mean, itjust happens. You know, we
thought a little bit of whatthose two or three weeks ago, we
had CrowdStrike shut down theaviation system around the world
(28:58):
for several hours. At someairlines had a very difficult
time getting back online. So howdo those things impact this?
When we talk about technologyand autonomy and reliance on
those systems in order to runthese types of operations, I
think is really going to be keyas well. Yeah,
Matthew Weitzel (29:15):
I agree. Let's come back to down to Brian here,
and Brian, what specific tasksor operations do you think the
autonomous vehicle can handleeffectively is in your
operation? Yeah,
Brian Wemple (29:29):
we can have a lot of thoughts. I know we've talked
to Baptiste rich. I mean, I'veall tracked busy team about this
for a number of years. I was atrade show probably five years
ago, we were in the autonomousshuttle personnel shuttle,
right? So we've had this on ourmind for a number of years, for
sure, and we have looked atdifferent options that we've
(29:54):
had. I mean, there's, there'sdefinitely a lot of potential
opportunity, and I think some ofthe. Points being made about
that balance of having workersready to work the operation
compared to having autonomousequipment available. Generally
speaking, I feel like autonomousvehicles really are a great
(30:16):
opportunity to invest andsupplement what you're doing in
the operation. So as we talkthrough this, and I think about
it, I think at least for us, youknow, I really see this as an
opportunity to bringopportunities and to supplement
what we're doing today. So somuch to say, like here in
Greenville, Spartanburg, maybe,you know, for one outbound
flight, we run our bags withperson, and then the next
(30:38):
Outbound Flight runs with anautonomous vehicle, and then we
can flip it around. So banksgoing from a tail for an
arriving flight could be runwith an autonomous vehicle on
one and then it could be with aperson another. So it kind of a
concept of mixing it up. May bea good opportunity there to
introduce, you know, theopportunity for efficiencies.
When I think about staffinglevels at an airport, it's
(30:59):
highly dependent on how manyairplanes you have on the ground
at a given time. And so airlinescheduling, unfortunately, is
one where we're trying tomaximize, obviously,
profitability in the market, butsometimes that means flight
schedules will get what we callpeaked, where we have 20 flights
a day. I'm just using randomnumbers here for GSP, but at
(31:20):
those 20 flights today, youmight have four of them on the
ground right at the same time.
They're not evenly spread out.
And so when we talked aboutintroducing autonomous vehicles
in the operation, well we knowwe're never going to not have
any staff at an airport, right?
And so for us, what we see is,when you have those four flights
a day, can you have the time youcome in and basically reduce the
burden versus us having to bringmore labor in to cover, in
(31:44):
essence, what would be, what Iwould say like a short peak,
right? And so when we talk aboutopportunity, it's really about
trying to kind of normalize thelabor requirement of a given
operation by bringing in, youknow, the autonomous type
equipment that would allow us torationalize, you know, the peak
demands of the operation. Andthat's a benefit, not only in
(32:05):
schedule operation, but also offschedule operations. I know GSP
is a proud crowd that's is arecipient of a lot of diverting
flights. Right? Come from fromlike Charlotte or Atlanta, and
they can't land there theyappear. And so that would be
another good example of offschedule operations where we
don't expect to have airplaneshere, we have a plan for them,
(32:27):
then all of a sudden they'rehere, right? And if we have
reliable, autonomous solutionsthat could help us manage those
types of unplanned activity,that would also provide a lot of
benefit in the operation.
Obviously, we're looking atluggage tractors. So, I mean,
we're talking about theopportunity of moving luggage,
you know, around the airports.
That's what we kind of looked atright now. And so, I mean,
(32:48):
there's, there's obviously a lotof activity there with that, but
there's the potential in thefuture also to look at other
functions of the operation, suchas, you know, aircraft for
chefs, right? What's to say thatwe can't have a autonomous
vehicle performing that functionof actually pushing the aircraft
back from the gate? So andagain, it's a it's a demand that
(33:09):
exists in the operation. And Ithink in an airport environment,
there's a lot of opportunity tokind of control how that
function would occur, becauseramps right, being, you know,
location of the geographic, youknow, limitations, whatever it's
you have a lot of control in anairport environment, and so it
does provide a lot of potentialopportunity for that type of
(33:32):
stuff. So those are just someexamples of things that we've
seen or thought about lookingforward. Okay, and
Matthew Weitzel (33:39):
Marty, would you like to respond
Marty Gray (33:41):
much like you just said, you know, all that same
like opportunity, right? Yeah. Imean, we will, we will look to
deploy such technology andinnovation in areas where
there's opportunity, and wedon't know, but internally we
don't know. We're too immature,yeah, for this at this time. But
what I can tell you is, youknow, based on the conversations
that we've had thus far, andthose who we have speak, been
(34:03):
speaking with for do createopportunity. It's point to
point. You know, I don't want tomake this more complex than it
needs to be to get right, butsimple touch time, point to
point, off the tail, onto acart, to a carousel, right? This
gets to a place where we canstart measuring let's start
looking at safety. Let's startlooking at performance. Start
(34:26):
small, but I can tell you, I'malso going into this with no, no
finish line, if you will. Iwould love to already start
thinking about pushing backaircraft with similar type
technology. I mean, this is areality of what we're doing
right now, but starting smalland getting it right, getting it
valued. When you talk about theinside operations of our cargo
(34:51):
warehousing, I mean, I see thatalready being doable, given that
we're seeing it in otherindustries, doing it in a
production. Or a facilitymanufacturing type application.
So I didn't see any reason whywe couldn't deploy something
like that in our cargooperations today. Again, taking
a step back to make sure that weget, you know, the kit, the
(35:12):
culture, employing, buy in, thecommunication, and these are all
things that, you know, I feel weneed to have softly in place
before we just go to deployment.
But for us, you know, we'rethinking, really, I feel like
we're thinking really, reallybig to the point, yeah, that,
you know, there's a realattraction to be one day pushing
back aircraft with with thissort of technology.
Matthew Weitzel (35:34):
Yep. And then Ruben, does this look like a
little bit easier for a cargocarrier?
Ruben Aradas (35:40):
Well, we don't see a an autonomous cargo tracker,
for example, as something thatwould be easier for us. You
know, we're more interested insome of the things that we may
talk about later, and some ofthe the the material that you
received today, where anautonomous dolly makes more
sense to us, right? Like I said,Time is our enemy. Every minute
(36:04):
that we can get back helps ourcustomer. So we need to find a
way to get that time back, andwe think that autonomous dollies
is the way to do that. We canmove one dolly at a time. We
could network the dollies to gowherever they want and get them
there much quicker than we canpulling three containers at a
time with a tuff right? Becausetypically what happens in our
(36:25):
operation is we have to wait forthose containers to be loaded.
So if the first one is loaded,it can't go anywhere until the
last one is loaded, and so thatvolume just sits there until all
of the containers are ready togo, and then they get moved out
to the aircraft. Whereas if wewere able to move one valley at
a time, we're able to get someof that time back. If we were to
(36:47):
just get a minute back, or 30seconds, and we got to load an
airplane that's got 30containers in it, do the math,
you know, that's 30 minutes or15 minutes that you get back in
just that amount of time.
Matthew Weitzel (37:00):
Terry Do you want to Terry real quick? So
will there be any structuralchanges that need to be made to
accommodate autonomous vehicles?
Terry Seaworth (37:09):
That's a good question. So right? The
difference differences betweenautonomous vehicles and people
driving them, of course, the youknow, charging stations or
depots for maybe immediatestorage points for baggage or
cargo, you know, while they waitfor a different tug to pick them
up or to be to be groupedtogether in another in a
(37:30):
different order to go to theirdestination. I do feel like an
airport would probably need toconsider how the ramp space is
used. Do autonomous vehiclesneed more space to turn around
and queue, or less space. Soyes, I do think there wouldn't
have to be some some sort ofstructural changes to
(37:50):
accommodate autonomous thedifferences between autonomous
vehicles and the way that we ashumans drive drive vehicles. I
think, though, there's theadvantage to having the
additional technology and datawould outweigh those
modifications. So the fact thatan autonomous vehicle can have
knowledge of the entire systemat any given point in time and
(38:13):
know how many bags are yetexpected to be loaded onto that
flight, or perhaps in thefuture, they would even know the
weight of the bags and thatcould feed to the weights and
measurements calculations thatthe pilot has to make. I feel
like, you know, as somebodymentioned, baby steps, this kind
of being the first step of manyto get us more information, more
(38:33):
data and more efficiency to theoperation.
Matthew Weitzel (38:36):
That's a great answer. Yeah, I appreciate that.
So I think this is probablygoing to be the last question. I
think we have really kind ofgone over a lot today. But so
what are you going to be lookingfor today from the demo like,
what will you what will youreyes be focused on? What we'd be
looking at and what's importantto you? I
Terry Seaworth (38:52):
hope I know, but you might answer a lot of
questions. But you know, ofcourse, the demonstration like
this, I really appreciate allthe energy that's gone into it,
but I actually have questionsfrom my colleagues who are very
interested, but couldn'tparticipate today, about
weather, which has already beenkind of discussed operationally,
some of the things that weexpect autonomous vehicles to do
(39:14):
well. And then, you know, whereare their shortcomings? Where
are we going to have to fit thehuman component back into the
operation. You know, trainingwas a really good one. How do we
train people now to work aroundautonomous vehicles? What do
they need to expect? What dothey need to do in response? So,
(39:34):
yes, I definitely planning toask a
Matthew Weitzel (39:36):
lot to push.
For sure. Yes, all right, Brian,what
Dave Edwards (39:39):
are you going to be looking for
Brian Wemple (39:41):
today? I think talking with rich yesterday, and
he volunteered to demonstratethe collision avoidance rates on
the vehicle. So he's going tostand in front of one and make
sure it stops. I think this ismy first opportunity to actually
see this particular vehicle inthe. In the operation at Newark,
we talked about the bunch. So Ithink it's, you know, a kid with
(40:06):
a brand new, like, game consoleor something that's like,
Matthew Weitzel (40:11):
don't either wide open, like, Okay, wow.
Where we, you know,
Brian Wemple (40:13):
what do we even, you know, they don't even know
what they're stepping into,right? Because it's so exciting.
There's so much potential. Ithink that's just that just
trying to absorb as much aspossible about what we can
observe learn with theequipment, and then take that
knowledge that we learned todayand then just start thinking
more about getting what can wedo with it? What are the
(40:35):
questions? Where do we need tokind of investigate further? So
it's really for us, just part ofthe journey of learning more.
And again, I think for today,it's just learn as much as we
can working with folks here inthis meeting and just
collaborate, obviously, andlearn from each other, and then
use it to work with the productdesigners manufacturers, to say,
(41:01):
Hey, these are events. How do wego make this work? Yeah,
Matthew Weitzel (41:04):
exactly. All right. Marty, yeah,
Marty Gray (41:06):
just in John, just I'm excited to see it for all
the conversations and meetings,drawings, pamphlets I've looked
at, oh, this. It's time to seeit. That's where we're at. And
then see it, touch it, feel it.
And I know that that's, youknow, that will drive all kinds
of conversations for our triphome and answering some of these
(41:27):
questions for ourselves. Youknow, hey, now that you seen it,
what does opportunity look like?
You know, it'll, it'll, it'lljust answer a lot of questions
on ourselves. Yeah, I'm excitedto see it.
Ruben Aradas (41:39):
Yeah, yeah. For us, we've actually had the
opportunity to do some demos atour major gateway in Louisville,
and when we started thosedemonstrations, we knew right
away that the technology justwasn't ready. So that's what
we're going to be looking for.
You know, are you bringing afinished product to the
(42:00):
operation, right? And does itoperate reliably? Does it
operate without errors? Or theword we don't like to use,
failure? And what questions aregoing to come up? Right? There's
going to be lots of questions.
How does it operate on aninfield? What happens when
there's a change? When youchange the operating
(42:23):
environment, if you're makingright turns all the time, and
all of a sudden now you got tomake left turns. What happens to
that vehicle? If you have tochange or they new facility, new
building goes up, what happensto the travel path of that
vehicle as structures get in itsway as construction takes place
at an airport, right? Whathappens to to the vehicle when
(42:46):
all of these things arechallenging its ability to
operate? So that's, that's whatwe're going to be looking for,
is what, what you questions,what, where, how the innovation
has improved right over the lastfew years from when we did our
testing, that's what we're goingto be looking for. Okay,
Dave Edwards (43:05):
I think for the airport, you know, we want to,
really want to see how all ofyou in this room respond to
technology that's here and mepresented today. And I think
we're just scratching thesurface still on this, lots of
questions to be answered. Youdon't know what we don't know at
this point, until you see itrolled out in the operating
(43:26):
environment, we're going tocontinue to learn, and that's
what we have to do from this.
But I think that's whereautonomous vehicles can help us
with that. So I'm excited to seethe response today, see the
vehicle in operation again, andthen just Garner feedback from
this group as to what you thinkthe opportunities are in your
operations. My team will beevaluating it. From our
(43:49):
perspective, cargo operation,what we do here on the airport,
but I'm really interested tohear from a lot of the folks in
this room as to what theirconcerns are or and hopefully a
lot of excitement after wefinish things. Today's day,
Matthew Weitzel (44:04):
well, let's give our panelists a big round
of applause.
Thank you for tuning in to thisepisode of the GSE podcast. We
hope you found it informativeand engaging. If this episode
resonated with you, please shareit with your colleagues and
(44:26):
peers in the ground supportequipment community, your
support is invaluable to us.
We'd appreciate it if you couldtake a moment to rate and review
our podcast. Your feedback notonly encourages us, but also
helps expand our reach withinthe GSE community. Keep an eye
out for more episodes as wecontinue to explore the dynamic
world of ground operations,bringing you the latest trends,
insights and stories from theindustry. Thank you for
(44:49):
listening to the GSE podcastuntil we meet again. Stay
grounded and keep pushingforward. You.
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