Schiphol conducts trial with self-driving buses on airside

https://news.schiphol.com/schiphol-conducts-trial-with-self-driving-buses-on-airside/

by riezebos • 2 years ago

66 70 2 years ago

news.schiphol.com

I was flying to Schiphol on Monday and use that airport as my favorite for long-haul flights, even though I'm from Germany. It's a really nice airport.

ginko2• 2 years ago

It's one of my least favorite airports in Europe. The number of times my luggage got lost there alone is enough for me to avoid whenever possible. The shops and restaurants are also extremely bland.

firloop• 2 years ago

The needed context seems to be that the person you are replying to is German. I don't love Schiphol either, but it beats any German airport (looking at Frankfurt in particular).

Detrytus• 2 years ago

The shops and restaurants are also extremely bland.

Worse than Frankfurt? It seems like the only food you can get there is a hot-dog...

wenc• 2 years ago

Schiphol AMS is my favorite European airport.

It’s not as great as SIN, ICN or the once dominant HKG though.

rf15• 2 years ago

Whenever I travel in a group through Shiphol, at least one piece of luggage gets missing every time. Yes, they manage to get it back to you eventually (although I did lose an expensive pair of running shoes there), but the amount of hoops you have to jump through at times is complete madness. After ten years of going over Shiphol 1-2 per year, I'm now at a point where I just try to find a route around it.

dustincoates• 2 years ago

Weird, Schiphol is my least favorite major airport. Poor dining options, for one, but the worst is how narrow the pathways are. If you're trying to pass a gate that's within twenty minutes of the boarding time, you've got to push through a crowd. (And I can't blame the crowd, as there's not nearly enough seating.)

This is when flying Air France/KLM within Europe. Maybe it's better in other terminals.

sfjailbird• 2 years ago

I hate Schiphol, and my family tend to call it by a name that rhymes.

alamortsubite2• 2 years ago

I've several times made it from a hotel room in town to my gate at Schiphol in under an hour. Without trying, and walking/taking the train from central.

tdudhhu• 2 years ago

Self driving is a bit of a stretch here. There are already a lot locations around the world where autonomous vehicles are driving, even in the Nederlands.

For example in the Netherlands there is a container terminal that has been using autonomous trucks for decades. And since 1999 there have been autonomous busses in Rotterdam.

Yes they are self driving, but not as smart as self driving means today.

ironmagma• 2 years ago

What makes that possible? Closed course, has to stay on tracks?

smokel• 2 years ago

Magnets!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ParkShuttle

jessriedel• 2 years ago

Yes there doesn’t seem to be anything interesting here. They obviously aren’t developing anything remotely like the Waymo/Cruise tech, and no reason to think they’ve developed anything useful even within some highly constrained setting. I’d guess it’s a corporate feel-good project that will be wound down after the press release.

bangkoksbest• 2 years ago

Self-driving in ports is a vastly simpler problem though because the environment can be closed and controlled and devoid of any UX concerns, making it basically a simple robotics problem.

belter4• 2 years ago

From YouTube comments, it seems was an experiment of 2023 with video only uploaded now. It also looks like was not that successful, as they were too slow, and ended up causing problems for the meat based drivers...

IncreasePosts• 2 years ago

They're made of meat?

knicholes• 2 years ago

Especially if the observer is a tiger!

belter4• 2 years ago

Totally: https://youtu.be/T6JFTmQCFHg

elif3• 2 years ago

From one comment. Not comments. The rest of the pessimistic comments, like yours, are from a position lacking any experience of this vehicle.

belter4• 2 years ago

Dont blame the messenger. Why don't you fill us in on the project status?

interestica2• 2 years ago

I was at Dulles/DC and the air-side transportation was interesting: the jetbridge was also a bus. It's a "mobile lounge" and I guess a few airports have them. There's definitely something interesting when transit isn't seen as transit...but just mobile public spaces?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_lounge

0xcde4c3db• 2 years ago

Tom Scott video (because of course he did one):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3OqAN4ISOw

alistairSH• 2 years ago

Yep, Dulles opened just as jet bridges became common. They were originally used for embarkation/disembarkation as well.

These days, they're mostly used to transport international arrivals from the gates (which have jet bridges) to the terminal that contains immigration control. Non-international have an option to use the lounges or a subway (usually depending on which gate you're at and where you need to go - sometime the lounge is faster than the train).

A bit of an anachronism today. But, having grown up in the DC area, they're definitely have a nostalgia factor.

showerst• 2 years ago

These things have a high 'what might have been' future factor, but man they are annoying in practice. Because you have to wait for everyone to cram inside, it feels much slower than a train or moving walkway. They're very frustrating after a long flight when you just want to get to customs and get home.

aidenn02• 2 years ago

I grew up near Dulles. Everybody seems to hate on the mobile lounges, but I've never not beaten my luggage to the baggage claim, and I haven't found it any quicker to get from my gate to the exit at other similarly large airports. In any event they are being retired in favor of below-ground trains.

alamortsubite2• 2 years ago

Care for an extra dollop of motion sickness after your long flight? Welcome aboard the IAD people movers!

beardyw• 2 years ago

Is "autonomous ground operation" a valid ambition in and of itself? Surely it needs qualification

- which means that ...

eastbound• 2 years ago

Next step: Going down from your plane, your Apple Video Bus strolls around the tarmac, passes through a giant Xray scanner, checks your passport (embedded on your seat), suggests a thousand duty-free products and makes you wear a luxury watch for about 8 seconds just for marketing, rolls straight onto the highway and drops you off at the hotel. No airport facilities.

wantsanagent2• 2 years ago

Any chance we can get the title modified to read "Schiphol airport ..." as many won't know if this is a company, a town, or what until paragraph 4 of the press release?

k8sToGo• 2 years ago

Schipol is quite a famous airport, though.

ghaff2• 2 years ago

I'd be quite confident that the vast majority of people who don't live in or travel to Europe a lot have never heard of it.

wantsanagent2• 2 years ago

I only learned about it last week because I was considering a trip to Amsterdam. But I'm also happy to have "airport" added to "JFK" "ORD" or "SFO" which strike me as obviously airports.

Sirizarry• 2 years ago

Never heard of schipol. I’m sure there are many things I think are very famous that you’ve never heard of as well. World is big yadda yadda I think two words to explain what a schipol was would be nice is all

isodev• 2 years ago

It's literally Amsterdam Airport? I don't think it needs clarification. It's like saying "JFK/Heathrow/LAX conducts trial with self-driving buses on airside"

afavour• 2 years ago

I think OP is saying people don't know that. Like, similarly, someone might say "What is JFK?" in your example.

marcosdumay• 2 years ago

Hum... I don't automatically read any of those names as airports. The title is a bit clear because of the "airside", but people that don't have lots of experiency in airports won't recognize that word either.

ChrisClark• 2 years ago

I have no idea where JFK or Heathrow airports are. Next time please include a location in your message too. ;)

jajko• 2 years ago

Half of people I know wouldnt recognize LAX just casually mentioned, you may realize 95% of human population doesnt live in US and folks from many backgrounds come here.

I for example know the name only due to flying to/from it during work & travel stint during university times, otherwise nope. Simply not that famous in Europe, even JFK as an airport name aint guaranteed to be recognized here (but more than LAX).

LAC-Tech• 2 years ago

It's a pretty big global airport, isn't it? Maybe for freight more than passangers, but I definitely know the name and I've never been to the Netherlands.

A quick look on wikipedia says it has about the same passenger and freight numbers as JFK, though I guess that's more well known because of all the sitcoms set in New York.

traceroute66• 2 years ago

many won't know if this is a company, a town, or what until paragraph 4 of the press release?

The word "airside" in the title already gives a pretty enormous clue !

jprete• 2 years ago

I think there's enough uncertainty in the post where assuming it's an airport would have a significant chance of being wrong. Nobody enjoys being corrected on a mistaken "obvious" assumption.

starmftronajoll• 2 years ago

I'm with you! I thought it was a town for most of the release. I didn't know what "airside" meant either, pardon my ignorance. I've never encountered that word in American English.

Schiphol• 2 years ago

Seconded

sandworm101• 2 years ago

> to investigate what the advantages of autonomous transport can be and what employees think of it.

Lets not kid ourselves. The only real "advantage" would have been one less driver earning a paycheck.

I've been on the airside passenger busses at Schipol. They move faster than the average bus. I cannot see this tiny thing ever competing with those pro drivers.

flemhans2• 2 years ago

Availability outside hours where it's not currently feasible to have a driver.

Immunity to strikes, illness, and all those pesky complexities with meat and flesh

ok_dad• 2 years ago

Complex human flesh is the point of all this stuff we make and do, maybe we shouldn’t put all that meat out of a job for no good economic reason? Busses, trains, ships, etc don’t need to be automated, one or a few professional humans can operate those cheaper and safer than an advanced AI system.

mschuster91• 2 years ago

Lets not kid ourselves. The only real "advantage" would have been one less driver earning a paycheck.

Given that all modern, developed countries have to fight with a population decrease, this is actually a good thing. We have to prepare for a future where there will be barely anyone left to do relatively low-skill jobs, and the earlier we begin to automate them, the better - otherwise, we'll be in quite the bind in a decade or two, once the last boomers that work high into their 80s just to survive are finally dead.

SoftTalker• 2 years ago

Yes they are among the fastest buses I've ever been on. They drive like they are on a race track.

svilen_dobrev• 2 years ago

i don't know about self-driveing..

what would be far-better and far-easier, is just to use electrical buses instead of those diesel never-ever-turned-off 24/7 smoke-producers-on-wheels. in all airports. poor or Rich..

but no.

uebdkdxsndndh• 2 years ago

As people already mention positive aspects about Schiphol. The new hand luggage scanners allow you to finally take liquids of any volume with you, forget max 100ml sized containers. One of the few airports that has them afaik

Schiphol conducts trial with self-driving buses on airside

Related Stories