The mobility and transport needs to, from and within airport platforms are very wide and very diverse. Passengers and employees of companies working in the territory, goods sold in the duty free shops of the airport or to be cargoed by airplanes, flow of luggage ... All, on various terminals, carparks, runways, tracks and roads in connection with public transport, etc. For the Aéroports de Paris Group, passengers and goods flows merging, in a context of rapidly changing intermodal mobility and the continuous quest for improvement and attractiveness of the airport territory, offer an opportunity to invent a new generation of connected airports. This is why, starting in 2014, the ADP Group's Innovation Hub began to explore the potential of autonomous vehicles for its development and operations.
Airport of Paris (ADP) – Innovation Hub
- Our client
- Groupe Aéroports de Paris
- The challenge
Explore the application and the potential of autonomous vehicles in airports.
- Our solution
Develop the autonomous vehicle trial in the airport city
At the dawn of a major project aiming at adopting future autonomous mobility solutions, particularly in the context of the overhaul of Paris-Orly airport and the creation of the T4 terminal at Paris-Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport, the Innovation Hub missioned AVAIRX to carry out the opportunity and feasibility studies. More than ten application scenarios were identified for a potential application of autonomous technology, in both the city side (landside) and the airside, the carparks, the development of the airport city, etc.
Highlighting the capacity of autonomous transport systems to improve service quality and the regularity of various transport modes, but also to make road access more accessible to the major airport hubs, they provide ideas for addressing this strategic issue for the development and the competitiveness of airport platforms. These studies led ADP to launch a trial of autonomous electric shuttles in the heart of Roissypôle, the business district of the Paris-Charles-De-Gaulle airport, a first in a French airport.
- Results
Between March and July 2018, two autonomous shuttles of the French equipment manufacturer NAVYA were operated by Keolis. They connected the ADP headquarters to two hotels and the Roissy RER suburban train station, on a 700 m track concentrating great complexity: allowing two shuttles to cross a busy road with C-ITS communication, traffic and crossing systems in an extremely dense environment and roamed by many pedestrians.
With this first trial, which is a key step in its strategy to become a major player in the autonomous vehicle ecosystem, the ADP Group now wants to launch the development of a strategic autonomous systems roadmap. It will include feasibility studies of autonomous vehicle transport systems on its territory, with multidomain applications, landside and airside.