IN the not-too-distant future, a traveller’s face will replace a boarding pass, and recognition software will replace the gate agent scanning each traveller’s ticket. Airline executives separated by distance will be able to use virtual reality eyewear to walk together through an airplane cabin and solve design problems.
In this same future, autonomous vehicles could help passengers check in and airplanes push back.
The future is now as the aviation industry embraces new technology as enthusiastically as it does jumbo jets packed with well-behaved, premium-fare paying passengers.
According to a survey by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), air travellers are just as excited about this modernisation. About three-quarters of those interviewed by the association expect to be able to check their bag in three minutes (78 per cent), pass through immigration in 10 minutes (74 per cent) and browse the Internet in flight (73 per cent).
Another industry study reports that airlines and airports are consistently spending money to make technological advances happen because it is critical to meet ever-higher demands from passengers.
One of the newest developments in aviation evolved from consumer video games is virtual reality. As the visual product improved, virtual reality products using fine-tuned, realistic 3D environments were incorporated for design, training and marketing in the air travel industry.
In a computer lab in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, interior systems designers at Rockwell Collins use virtual reality to test the airline cabins they create, inviting customers to sit in seats, open overhead bins and tug rolling suitcases down the aisle.
This allows them to discover and fix mistakes before the design is finalised.
It would take “crazy-man money” to actually build a prototype and inspect it this way, said David Balfour, a visualisation specialist with the company. Virtual reality allows airlines to “put a virtual-reality headset on and stand up and view an entire cabin”.
In the virtual-reality environment, to err is actually a good thing, said Glenn Johnson, director of the design studio at Rockwell Collins.
Designs “fail quicker and cheaper”, he said, which means improvements can come faster.
This ability to create large and complex environments also makes virtual reality promising for training airfield staff members, who work in hazardous environments, servicing airliners in all kinds of weather and light conditions.
With RampVR, a programme developed by IATA, students wear goggles and identify problems as they virtually inspect an airplane and the ramp area around it. Experiential training sticks in the mind, according to Frederic Leger, airport passenger cargo and security product director for the association.
“You are living the training because you are active in the training,” Leger said.
“It’s like a game where you have a score at the end, so it goes to the emotional part of your brain.”
Considering that airline pilots do recurrent training in a simulator on a regular basis, bringing a simulated setting to other areas of the industry is not a new concept. It is only recently, however, that the improved quality and lower cost of virtual reality have made its widespread use practical.
With all the showy advantages of virtual reality, some airlines are trying to turn the “wow” into revenue. At a pop-up cafe in London earlier this month, Air Canada invited visitors to watch a Boeing 787 Dreamliner flight in virtual reality.
The German airline Lufthansa prepared a 360° video of the interior of its long-haul aircraft, and its employees presented viewing goggles to ticketed passengers waiting at boarding gates in Newark, New Jersey, and Frankfurt, Germany, last year.
After watching the show, Lufthansa, asked if they wanted to purchase an upgrade to a premium economy seat.
“How can you communicate a travel product? This is the problem in the industry,” said Torsten Wingenter, Lufthansa’s senior director of digital innovations. Virtual reality gave the company the “first chance to show the product in an emotional way”.
After the test, the emotion at the airline can be described as happy. A number of economy passengers paid US$299 (RM1,255) more to fly in premium economy after viewing the cabin in virtual reality. Wingenter would not say how many, but that it was “a significant number”.
Next month, Lufthansa passengers flying out of Los Angeles will be able to use biometric boarding — boarding gates that let passengers onto the airplane with no paper ticket or electronic boarding pass, just a face that matches their passport photo.
Passengers stand in front of a camera that takes their picture, and then compares it to the traveller’s image in the passport data base.
In a workshop in Geneva, the Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques (SITA) has several robots that travel to industry conferences around the world to start conversations about how autonomous vehicles might be used in aviation.
One robot, named Kate, is a self-directed check-in kiosk that moves to areas of congestion as needed. The other robot, Leo, takes bags from passengers and deposits them where they need to be to get routed to the proper destination.
“The robots are also demonstrators to get people talking about what is the future of autonomous vehicles in the airport,” said SITA’s technology chief, Jim Peters.
But, for all that technology has to offer, one of the most important tests is how well the next new gadget plays with people.
“Some things can be prototyped and some things can’t,” he said.
“Some things you have to have a physical interaction with to figure out what works.” -- NYT