Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) is the latest such facility to introduce autonomous wheelchairs, which allow users to make multiple stops as they navigate its halls.
Expanding independence was a central aim for the project, Mansoureh Jeihani, director of the National Transportation Center at Morgan State University in Maryland, said. The endeavor, she stressed, could also serve older passengers who may have difficulty walking.
Jeihani is also the director of the Safety and Mobility Advancements Regional Transportation and Economics Research (SMARTER) Center at Morgan State, and one of the members of the development and design team behind the BWI autonomous wheelchair project. It began five years ago, she said.
The endeavor, a pilot, has deployed three Urban Flow wheelchairs, the university said recently, with the possibility of growing to a fleet of five. Passengers access and direct the wheelchairs via a smartphone app.
Passengers wanting to use the chair scan a QR code with their cellphone, which takes them to the app. They then use the app to navigate the airport, with the help of the autonomous vehicle (AV) technology, according to Kofi Nyarko, director of the Center for Equitable Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Systems at Morgan State and a lead researcher on the project.
“If you have your ticket in hand, and you want to scan it, you can do that. It will get the gate information, and now it’s on its way,” Nyarko said, outlining some of the technology’s abilities. “The fact that it’s as easy to use as any other application on your phone, that is kind of the selling point here.”
Autonomous wheelchairs are also in service at the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport and at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. In a related initiative, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport has deployed devices known as Auto-DollyTugs — electric AVs with “robotic arms,” to handle baggage and cargo on flight lines.
Airports tend to be good settings for autonomous technology, experts said, noting these locations have an easily defined footprint, but are also complex settings with many different moving parts.
“To coordinate all of those operations, all those people, involves a lot of other people and a lot of other systems that are interacting,” Nyarko said. “It’s a lot of opportunities to improve efficiencies. And AV systems can help do this … It’s also opportunities to ease the process of people transiting in these hubs.”
AV technology can help to improve the passenger experience, Nyarko said, because the flyer is not relying so heavily on other people.
“But also, they may actually end up being safer, depending on how this technology is put together,” he said. “Automation brings ease. But also brings an element of safety, if done properly, and allows these complex systems to operate in a much more autonomous fashion.”
Autonomous wheelchairs have applications well beyond airports. Researchers at Morgan State said they could imagine the devices being deployed in hospitals, other large buildings like museums, in office settings, or on college campuses.
Nyarko recounted how a recent trip to Disney World illustrated how AV technology in wheelchairs — or strollers — could also be a good fit.
“If I could have put my kids in a stroller, that I could direct and follow, that would be tremendously helpful,” he said.
Jeihani said she could foresee an autonomous wheelchair syncing with an AV, allowing the different modes to offer true door-to-door mobility service.
A central aim for autonomous technology — whether it’s used in wheelchairs or cars — researchers said, is to improve independence.
“The technology is there to help enable them to attain their autonomy, and their independence and to be able to travel with dignity just like everybody else,” Nyarko said.
