If you're nervous about missing a flight during your holiday season travels, Schiphol, located in Amsterdam, has your back. The international airport will introduce a navigation-savvy new navigation tool in the form of a robot to help travelers make their way around traffic-heavy terminals to help them meet ther destination right on time, whether it be a ticket gate or a boarding line.
Developed by researchers at Örebro University in Sweden, the robot, nicknamed Spencer, was created to assist travelers in finding their way around an airport in a timely and unharried fashion by letting users interact with an interface and "smart map" capabilities: the bot is able to measure the distance and time from where the user is to where the user needs to go using laser beams, accounting for obstuctions (like walls, kiosks, and other jetsetters, for instance) and integrating them as variables in its concluding calculation.
"Objects that are temporarily permanent, so to speak, are the most difficult to work around," said Achim Lilienthal, a professor who helped conceptualize and create the airport-savvy Spencer. "We do not know, for instance, how long that luggage trolley will be parked in a particular spot, which makes it harder for the robot to determine its own location."
"We are working on a general map representation that includes and allows the robot to handle temporarily permanent objects," he added.
Spencer will make its test run debut at Schiphol on Nov. 30 for a week. Its real-life experiences will be incorporated and it faces evaluation in March 2016 when European Commission representatives attend its official premiere.
Via: The Next Web
