[HN Gopher] Schiphol conducts trial with self-driving buses on a...
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Schiphol conducts trial with self-driving buses on airside
Author : riezebos
Score : 46 points
Date : 2024-03-27 17:55 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.schiphol.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.schiphol.com)
| davidkuennen wrote:
| 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.
| ginko wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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).
| bobthepanda wrote:
| What's a nice large European airport? I feel like I've
| heard terrible things of all of them, like LHR and CDG.
| ginko wrote:
| Copenhagen is quite nice.
| peterpost2 wrote:
| I would argue that's the only nice airport in Scandinavia
| even! Would say the worst layout on an airport i've ever
| seen is Stockholm Arlanda.
| dcminter wrote:
| Copenhagen airport is my favourite too - note however
| that Arlanda T5 is being expanded at the moment and it
| seems like it will be a lot nicer when they're finished.
| The security stuff is already much better: no need to
| unpack laptops etc. from hand luggage when going through
| the new section. T2 is still quite sucky though!
| varjag wrote:
| OSL is fine too. And it's not like there's a huge number
| of large hubs in Scandinavia...
| mdturnerphys wrote:
| Except for the incredibly low ceilings in some places.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I like Heathrow when travelling to or from London. It's
| huge, but there's public transport to each terminal, a
| reasonable selection of restaurants and generally
| somewhere to sit. It's fairly quiet.
|
| Changing between terminals at Heathrow is much less fun.
|
| CDG I find confusing.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Changing between terminals at Heathrow is much less fun.
|
| I decided to stay at a Heathrow airport hotel a while
| back. Turned out I had to change terminals and I'm pretty
| sure it took me at least as long as getting a shuttle bus
| to one of the hotels would have taken.
|
| You often have to walk quite a ways too.
|
| Overall though Heathrow is pretty good among the large
| European airports.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I actually kinda enjoy the distance between terminals.
| After a long international flight, I deliberately take
| the tunnel, and skip the moving walkways. As long as I'm
| not rushing to make a connection, the walk is really
| nice.
| belter wrote:
| Frankfurt is atrocious, but Munich is great.
| Detrytus wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Schiphol AMS is my favorite European airport.
|
| It's not as great as SIN, ICN or the once dominant HKG though.
| rf15 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I hate Schiphol, and my family tend to call it by a name that
| rhymes.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| What makes that possible? Closed course, has to stay on tracks?
| smokel wrote:
| Magnets!
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ParkShuttle
| jessriedel wrote:
| 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.
| belter wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| They're made of meat?
| knicholes wrote:
| Especially if the observer is a tiger!
| belter wrote:
| Totally: https://youtu.be/T6JFTmQCFHg
| elif wrote:
| From one comment. Not comments. The rest of the pessimistic
| comments, like yours, are from a position lacking any
| experience of this vehicle.
| belter wrote:
| Dont blame the messenger. Why don't you fill us in on the
| project status?
| interestica wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Tom Scott video (because of course he did one):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3OqAN4ISOw
| alistairSH wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| 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.
| jfengel wrote:
| Partly, that's because the luggage processing is _very
| slow_ on international flights at Dulles. You have to go
| through immigration, which can be time consuming (though
| the automated ones are better of late). There 's no reason
| you should get to baggage claim ahead of the baggage.
|
| Aside from that, though... I think it's just that it feels
| like an additional step. You want to get going --
| especially if you're the sort of person who moves quickly
| through airports -- and now you're just waiting as the
| lounge fills up. After a long international flight, you
| don't want to be sitting and waiting.
|
| I won't be sorry to see the mobile lounges go. They were a
| clever idea at the time, but they're hardly "lounges" these
| days. They're just buses, at a time when you really, really
| don't want to be taking a bus.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > Partly, that's because the luggage processing is very
| slow on international flights at Dulles. You have to go
| through immigration, which can be time consuming (though
| the automated ones are better of late). There's no reason
| you should get to baggage claim ahead of the baggage.
|
| Somewhat OT, but I just realized I've never flown
| internationally from Dulles. I've flown internationally a
| fair amount, and I've flown from Dulles a _lot_ , but
| never the two together.
|
| Less OT, everything I wrote was for domestic flights.
| kiwijamo wrote:
| IAD is the only airport I've been to where I've spent an
| hour at immigration and then walked through to the
| luggage claims hall to find that my airline's ground
| handler still hadn't loaded bags from my flight on the
| carousel (note this was a full hour at least after
| arrival) so I had to wait even longer there! Every other
| port I've had long immigration processing, the good thing
| was my bags were usually already on the carousel.
| Interestingly, LAX on the other hand was a breeze, my
| bags was already on the carousel just as I walked in the
| hall. A brisk walk to intercept my bag as it rolled
| around and I was outside within minuites. YMMV but IAD is
| not an airport I'm keen to use anytime soon! :)
| interestica wrote:
| > They were a clever idea at the time, but they're hardly
| "lounges" these days. They're just buses, at a time when
| you really, really don't want to be taking a bus.
|
| Yeah they're definitely just buses that can open on each
| end at this point. They aspired to be lounges and they
| kind of convey (ha) what could have been. An actual
| automated mobile lounge isn't that crazy, right?
| Automation+batter power does make it more appealing.
| lmm wrote:
| You don't really want to be in a lounge at all after
| getting off, you just want to get where you're going.
| That's why most airports have lounges in departures but
| not in arrivals. A lounge that you could wait in until
| boarding time and have it pull up to your plane then
| might be nice, but with today's "security" procedures
| you'd need to have all of that built into the mobile
| section as well, which seems difficult.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| Care for an extra dollop of motion sickness after your long
| flight? Welcome aboard the IAD people movers!
| beardyw wrote:
| Is "autonomous ground operation" a valid ambition in and of
| itself? Surely it needs qualification
|
| - which means that ...
| eastbound wrote:
| 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.
| wantsanagent wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Schipol is quite a famous airport, though.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| wantsanagent wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I think OP is saying people don't know that. Like, similarly,
| someone might say "What is JFK?" in your example.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I have no idea where JFK or Heathrow airports are. Next time
| please include a location in your message too. ;)
| jajko wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Seconded
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> 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.
| flemhans wrote:
| 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
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Yes they are among the fastest buses I've ever been on. They
| drive like they are on a race track.
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