Autonomous Cargo

Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) for industrial applications offer safe, readily available and zero emission transportation of goods within closed environments (e.g. airports) and wider logistics applications (e.g. freight hubs) where vehicles can operate 24/7 to handle goods and move people. In airside operations, staff shortages are currently critical, causing delays in turning aircraft around and financial losses. Furthermore, frequent airside manual handling accidents injure human operators and damage aircraft and cargo.

The project will be led by RDM's autonomous vehicle arm, Aurrigo. Aurrigo have developed and tested autonomous vehicles including a passenger carrying AUTO-Shuttle for on and off-highway operations and AUTO-Dolly for airport baggage handling. In this project, RDM Aurrigo will develop the technology to build air cargo handling dollies, capable of carrying loads of up to 7.5t and test these in collaboration with UPS, a global freight handling company, who represent a first customer. An Auto-Cargo prototype will be developed and tested in a live environment, within the UPS hub at East Midlands Airport. To scale-up deployments of autonomous vehicles, RDM will redevelop the Auto-Sim tool for air cargo operations.

The project will develop, verify, and validate CAV technology and provide increased understanding of the infrastructure needed for optimum operation. Critically, it will deliver a means for any organisation wishing to implement CAV operations to produce a business case for doing so. We will develop technology that can combine a digital map of any cargo handling area with data about cargo throughput and external factors (e.g. flight schedules). From this data, the optimum number and type of CAVs can be modelled and the tool can illustrate what supporting infrastructure is needed. It will be able to model efficiency (reduced delays and faster aircraft turnarounds) and capacity gains (more flights per hour) from introducing autonomous vehicles and processes. It will also model cost reductions from reduced handling costs and potential revenue increases from greater capacity. Aurrigo will develop and test an Auto-Cargo dolly to validate the digital model which will be operated during a testing phase at East Midlands Airport to validate the technology and develop a supply chain.