Leaders involved in the Industrial Internet of Things technology development are looking at the next important step in IIot technology, which is figuring out the process of creating application testbeds. From a technological standpoint, many milestones have been met. However, there is a need for feedback from application developers in order to hone the technology.
See Also: What is the Internet of Things?
The Industrial Internet Consortium has recently sponsored a testbed that many travelers can appreciate. The testbed plans are to study the possibilities of smart airline baggage management.The purpose of this testbed will be to gather a better understanding of the lifecycle of a smart bag, from check-in at the airport to delivery at a flight destination.
The system will place smart luggage with passengers and flights, using GPS to track baggage locations in real-time and generate alerts. The testbed should show how luggage is tracked and monitored during an entire trip. Airlines should be able to see all of the smart bags on all of their flights, and travelers should see data associated with their bags by using their smartphones and the web.
The second part of the testbed phase will investigate sensor use on luggage conveyer belts and trucks, which should make it easier to spot bags heading for the wrong flight.
Fewer missing and damaged bags makes everyone happier
The goals outlined for the Smart Airline Baggage Management testbed are to reduce the amounts of delayed, damaged and lost bags, which will lower the risk for airlines.
“The testbed focus is to bring together fragmented applications and systems to drive solutions to make the airlines and airports more efficient during check-in and subsequent baggage handling across the aviation ecosystem for the benefit of passengers,” states the Industrial Internet Consortium website.
With this in mind, the solution needs to incorporate cloud-based airline applications and databases, cloud based analytics, and M2M and IoT platforms to manage, connect and secure real-time information from the smart baggage
“Smart connected baggage will reduce the instances of delay, damage and lost bags leading to lower economic risk exposure to the airline and agony to the passenger. Today about 6-7 bags are lost for every 1,000, per statistics from SITA survey and Department of Transportation. It costs airlines $100 to repatriate a delayed bag, and risk exposure for a lost bag is as much as $3300 per bag in the USA. With global airline passenger travel targeted to double in the next 20 years, any such efficiency added to the baggage handling system will have a big economic impact,” states the IIC website.
The IIC is currently involved with 17 testbeds for diverse application areas including Edge Intelligence, Smart Energy and Connected Care.
