[hemloc_io]

> Unfortunately for airlines, passengers don’t package their luggage in nicely uniform cardboard boxes. If they did, then the airlines could benefit directly from the recent takeoff in manipulator tech for warehouses. But airline luggage is way more wacky and irregular. If robots are going to handle it, they need to reason about how to grasp each item, handle its deformability, stack it in a stable way, and do all of this quickly, safely, and reliably.

Curious if you guys have put any thought into seeing if there's an operational change you could introduce to airlines, that would result in the tech side being a lot easier?

Palletizing logistics for consumer airtravel would be interesting...

[dmillard]

Operational changes for airlines are quite tricky - one of our bets is that most of the value for customers here is in handling "brownfield" deployments where you drop into an existing process, and that intelligence (or at least, good perception and reactive planning) really unlocks this ability from the robotics side.

For widebody planes, bags are already loaded into Unit Load Devices (ULDs), which are large semi-truncated boxes that get loaded directly onto aircraft. Narrow body planes don't use these (apparently) because they impact turn-time and decrease the amount of time a plane can be in the air, and also impacts how quickly bags come out, since it adds an extra step to unloading.

Many airport conveyance systems also load each bag into a bin, but those bins aren't loaded into the airplane because they belong to the airport and waste space/weight.

The best case for us would be a customer process change where everyone loads their luggage into perfectly regular and very sturdy hardshells, but this one's probably out of our hands.

[bombcar]

> The best case for us would be a customer process change where everyone loads their luggage into perfectly regular and very sturdy hardshells, but this one's probably out of our hands.

I could see a budget airline cooperating with a luggage/case manufacturer and offering "if your checked bag is EXACTLY a Pelican 1615TRVL, it flies free/cheap" - and then work with them to design a case that is easily automatable.

[hemloc_io]

Very cool stuff thanks for the commentary and good luck!