State of the Art Survey of Baggage Handling Systems Control and Automated Equipment
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FACULTY MECHANICAL, MARITIME AND MATERIALS ENGINEERING Delft University of Technology Department Maritime and Transport Technology Mekelweg 2 2628 CD Delft the Netherlands Phone +31 (0)15-2782889 Fax +31 (0)15-2781397 www.mtt.tudelft.nl Specialization: Transport Engineering and Logistics Report number: 2015.TEL.7978 Title: State of the art survey of baggage handling systems control and automated equipment Author: L.L.P. van Rijen (4036670) Title (in Dutch) Voortgang en huidige stand van techniek in de automatiserings en besturingstechnologien voor baggagesystemen. Assignment: literature Confidential: no Initiator (university): dr.ir. Y. Pang Supervisor: dr.ir. Y. Pang Date: 26-01-2016 This report consists of 68 pages and 1 appendices. It may only be reproduced literally and as a whole. For commercial purposes only with written authorization of Delft University of Technology. Requests for consult are only taken into consideration under the condition that the applicant denies all legal rights on liabilities concerning the contents of the advice. FACULTY OF MECHANICAL, MARITIME AND TU Delft mKammy] t.;liVi.-,i:i(W::^|r!lüïK|i,Vi Delft University of Technology Department of Marine and Transport Teclinology Mekelweg 2 2628 CD Delft the Netherlands Phone +31 (0)15-2782889 Fax +31 (0)15-2781397 www.mtt.tudelft.nl Student: L. L. P. van Rijen Assignment type: Literature Supervisor: Y. Pang Report number: 2015.TEL.7978 Specialization: TEL Confidential: No Creditpoints (EC): 10 Subject: State of the art of automation and system control in baggage handling Modern airport baggage handling concerns improving the processes from check-in through screening until departure, arrival and claims. Various automated baggage handling technologies are worldwide applied from sortation, transport, tracing and tracking, storage and retrieval. Together with integrated system control smooth handling processes and operations can be achieved with respect to handling speed, safety and efficiency. This literature assignment is to survey the state of the art of automated equipment and technologies applied in the field of airport baggage handling. Further, the principles and approaches of integrated baggage handling system control will be investigated. The survey of this assignment should cover the following: - to review the general airport baggage handling process including the description of sub- processes and involved equipment; - to summarize the functions and operations that can be automated; - to investigate the technologies to achieve automation and to describe relative applications; - to survey the existing and feasible concepts, methods and principles for the control of baggage handling systems. This report should be arranged in such a way that all data is structurally presented in graphs, tables, and lists with belonging descriptions and explanations in text. The report should comply with the guidelines of the section. Details can be found on the website. The mentor. Dr. ir. Y. Pang Preface This work has been made to fulfill a literature assignment from the department Transport Engineering and Logistics concerning baggage handling systems. It adds knowledge over the developments and state of the art of baggage handling systems, airports in particular. Baggage handling systems, being challenging transport infrastructures, are from a mechanical and control point of view very relevant and interesting to the department and myself. This work has been written in such a way that it can be understood by people with an academic background in this particular field. Summary The ongoing trend of worldwide air passenger growth and the corresponding growth of major airports hubs caused more and more throughput in these major airports hubs. As a consequence the baggage handling systems (BHS) grew simultaneously larger and more complex. At the same time, like many other industrial sectors automation experienced a vast increase. This report aims to survey the state of the art automated baggage handling equipment in which commercialized equipment is reviewed as well as radical new concepts which might give a glance into the future of automation in BHS. The increasing complexity and new challenges within large modern BHS impact the control of these particular systems as well. The mostly academic research into this specific field of control will hence be analysed as well. In this way, a complete review of BHS is realized, from the point a passenger deposits its bag up to the point the bag is placed inside the aircraft and back up to where the passenger picks up its bag again. The BHS can be divided in different parts, each with their unique equipment. The first concerns baggage drop-off and reclaim, the only parts coming into contact with the passenger. Automated baggage drop-off, one of the most recent additions to the automated equipment, is special since it is the only part which has interaction with the passenger. Screening follows after drop-off. The most modern screening equipment has high throughput and advanced 3D scanning techniques. In this way one pre-scanning step can be omitted, resulting in less rejections. Subsequently inner terminal transport and sorting is realised. The focus of new equipment is on speed and throughput. Destination coded vehicle systems are more and more common with the increased demand for higher velocities in continuously expanding airports. Many sorting options exist although they often have their own infrastructure which makes the choice also very dependents on the existing transport infrastructure. Early baggage systems are present in larger hub airports and exist in different forms. The make-up area including inbound unloading (when baggage has been brought back to the terminal) has seen a significant amount of new automated equipment being installed. From robotics to baggage aligning/orienting equipment. Automated carts and unit load device (ULD) unloaders have also been commercialized. The last part of the journey of the bag (from an outbound perspective) reaches up to the belly of the plane. Automation is much more scarcely present compared to the other parts of the BHS since a significant part is mechanised and/or realised with human involvement. New ideas however have emerged through patens which aim to realize more automation. The control chapter starts with an introduction to low and high level control and equipment for control. The following section about control challenges in BHS seeks to find the difficulties and opportunities in terms of i control. The state of the art high level control is discussed afterwards followed by an overview of research in the field of control of BHS. The main topics discussed are model predictive control (MPC) and multi agent systems (MAS). Due to the significant amount of research related to control of BHS, especially if control of material handling systems in general is included, the focus has been towards high level control and to largest topics MPC and MAS in particular. These topics covered to a large extent most of the research from recent years. Research in these topics specifically dedicated to BHS started between 2005 and 2010. MPC in a hierarchical control structure shows the most promise together with centralized MPC with a pre-calculated initial best guess to speed up computation time. For both fields of research remains still many research left to do before it can be introduced in real BHS. Automation seems to be expanding throughout the whole BHS. The most modern additions include the automated drop-off solutions and automated loading and unloading equipment for carts and ULD. For the remaining parts which rely still heavily on human involvement it can be argued that they will be automated as well. The technological progression and the trend of continuous automation up till today support this statement. List of abbreviations ABD: Automated baggage drop-off AMS: Amsterdam Airport Schiphol BHS: Baggage handling system(s) BPH: Bags per hour CTM: Container transfer module(s) DCV: Destination coded vehicle(s) EBS: Early bag storage(s) EDS: Explosive detection system(s) HBS: Hold baggage screening ICAO: International civil aviation organization ICS: Individual carrier system(s) IED: Improvised explosive device(s) MAS: Multi agent system(s) MPC: Model predictive control PEC: Photo electric cell RFID: Radio frequency identification SOA: State of the art ii Contents Preface .......................................................................................................................................... i Summary ....................................................................................................................................... i List of abbreviations ....................................................................................................................... ii 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1 2. The baggage handling process ................................................................................................ 3 3. Baggage handling equipment .................................................................................................. 4 3.1 Baggage drop-off and reclaim ............................................................................................... 4 3.2 Baggage screening ............................................................................................................. 10 3.3 Internal transport ..............................................................................................................