Skymantics, LLC — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 06a

Description

The number of air travelers is expected to grow an annual 3-7% rate and double in the next 20 years, which means 7-2 billion passengers will make use of airport facilities in 2035- Current airport infrastructures are not able to cope with this growth, and concourse expansions are increasingly difficult due to political, economic and environmental costs- A solution that seeks a better use of existing resources is needed to reduce increasingly high passenger boarding delays, security threats and unnecessary energy and fuel consumption- This Phase I project proposes to determine the feasibility of an indoor tracking platform with location and flight-aware services to predict passenger movement patterns and determine their impact to air transport operations for commercial stakeholder advantage- The objectives of this system are to track virtually all the passengers in transit the terminal (by making use of pervasive handheld devices and omnipresent wireless connectivity of the passenger), and to develop a data intelligence engine that predicts future airport infrastructure utilization with high accuracy- The long-term goal is to enable an intelligent infrastructure that automatically predicts issues such as transit bottlenecks, security risks and energy waste, and supports proactive optimization processes-