For the most part, traditional conveyor-based baggage-delivery systems work just fine, but they are pretty slow, which can throttle your throughput. That’s suddenly not a problem if you treat your bags to a kart-based roller coaster that reaches speeds up to 600m/s. aeroplanes won’t be the only things that are flying, figuratively anyway.
The new Baggage Tray System developed by Daifuku not only accelerates your bags to record speeds (for baggage) but also utilises RFID tags on each individual cart to reroute each bag-toting tray to where it needs to go with no need for barcode scanning. And although it wasn’t shown in this demo, the system also includes automated loading and unloading stations, which should be able to get bags on and off fast enough to make use of that speed.
It’d be pretty expensive to completely rip out and replace existing conveyor systems, so this new rig is being aimed mostly at large airports in growing markets like Asia and the Middle East. Still, one would hope higher-tech solutions like this — even if they are a little less fast and complex — will become that norm at new and newly renovated airports from here on out. The only downside is that they probably won’t let you ride one. [DigInfo TV]