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Airport Automation at HEL

Helsinki-Vantaa is one of the best airports in Northern Europe rated by Skyrax . This is where the memorial flight from Singapore SIN -> HEL comes.


Passenger tracking system. It can be seen who is in what queue, how much time it costs, from which sector it came and so on.

Last time I talked about Finnair . HEL is their base airport and they are very tightly integrated. An example is ultra-short transit times of 35 minutes (40 across the border), which require wildly debugged processes and modern technology both for allowing all passengers to pass through and in order to manage all baggage and lose almost nothing.

We, along the way, are one of the first to be allowed to take luggage in the underworld, so we went to show what was going on there. At the same time, let's look at the workplace of the dispatcher at security control and talk about automation. There is a couple of know-how.

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For me, the most beautiful thing in HEL is the atmosphere of some incredible calm and relaxation. Matti, the airport's product partner, said simply:

“Ah!” This we lose the rustling of leaves and birdsong, but very, very quiet.

He listened - and really, they lose. At the limit of sensitivity.

Short


HEL is an excellent transit airport for transfers on an intercontinental flight or for transfers to a European low-cost airline. From Moscow and St. Petersburg to Helsinki, trains Leo Tolstoy and Allegro run. You can go through the city, but you can go on Tikkuril and transfer to the train. The Lux Express carrier, already familiar to you , also makes a stop at the airport.

Built for the 52nd Olympic Games in Finland. In 1973, security checks were introduced for international flights, in 1978 for all, because a man with weapons got on board and hijacked the plane. Then Finnair paid the ransom, and a day later the guy was arrested.



Now the airport is expanding and rebuilding for the future, because the node’s traffic is growing. 50 airlines, two connected terminals (you can get a route on foot for two kilometers inside the building) and a cargo terminal nearby.



From Helsinki to the port 17 kilometers. I can’t say for sure how the place was chosen, but most likely it’s about my own rather large plot, where there was nobody. As elsewhere in Finland, at the bottom of the airport is a huge granite slab with a very thin layer of soil. There are no lakes on the course corners (that is, there are no problems with the birds). You can get by city buses (zone ABC), flight airport-train station (more expensive, but non-stop) and by train. It is best by train, because it also has a ticket for transport inside the city of the ABC zone. Controllers often go inside.

There are many interesting things at the airport, but the three main things are the organization of leisure, baggage handling and security automation. We’ll talk about them.



Safety


Passengers from different flights get to this place (this is a scan of a 180-degree panorama). Closer to the center you can see the hall, from where people go directly from the telescope, to the right - the stairs from the bus stop. Next to the central green passages (on the left in the panorama). To the side of them are the exits to this area to telescopic rails and buses. That is, all passengers in one place.



But there is a feature:



Two turnstiles work out only for flights with a short connection. Above them are written the numbers of these flights, when they are. That is, you can go not with everyone, but along an accelerated path.

These shaitan machines are needed to scan shoes when you don’t have time to take them off:



Not everyone is chased into the scanner, but only those who cleaned on a metal detector. Therefore, if you do not forget to put out the headphones, go very quickly:



Each tray has its own label. When placed in the scanner, the tray label is considered, then the tray drives into the introscope and the fun comes.



The usual scheme is this: a person sits in place, who stares intently at the screen and tries to find something suspicious there. In developed systems, there are still standard templates for searching in the picture of suspicious objects (somewhere neural networks and pattern recognition, somewhere a large fraction of metal or organics, somewhere generally strict rules). Here the picture leaves immediately for a remote server, where all recognizers are run on it. Plus watch remote operators. Plus (this is already my hypothesis) there are more than one picture if everything is arranged in the same way as on the luggage - that is, you can get several angles or even layers.

Here is the shift manager's workplace:



Now Matti is sitting on it, the airport software (something like a development director). We are in between flights, and he just shows the interfaces and statistics:



Cameras are stuck around the airport. The normal recognition of people is screwed to them (impersonal, we are in the GDPR zone). Further data about people are visualized on a map. People are colored by their statuses. You can see the waiting time, average values ​​in each place and so on. It is impossible to distinguish late ones personally (this is PD), but it is possible - by flow. Everything is written to the log - you can restore events at any time. Planning and much more, up to strategic decisions at the airport, are built from historical sections.


An example of the latest improvement. The Chinese lost a lot of time trying to find hot water for thermoses. We put the cooler.


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You almost certainly will not miss a room with a huge long screen, sunbeds and the sounds of nature:





It has two features. Firstly, when you enter, whirlpools of leaves form from the projector under your feet:



Near the first of them you can call up the system menu, if you put your hand to the wall and switch the video, or read about what's in the content. And then there will be a huge empty wall of wood. On it you can drive with your hands and leaves will be scattered:


In the photo Marina from the Russian representative office

You can only find out about this by chance, if you move your finger along the wall. They say that when the children discovered it on the first day after the introduction, there was no limit to joy.


Sensor with bracket edge

On the second floor of the common room (before passport control for departure) there is a cluster of places for sleeping:



How it works
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There are the same ones for work:



Wi-Fi is everywhere free, fast, and does not ask stupid questions on the start screen. Once you have to agree with the rules - that's all.

The entire airport is maintained in a calm wooden-gray style. Here are the great curtains:



And here is the cafe:



This is because the airport has its own design code, and people should immediately feel in Finland.

The airport is quiet (without voice announcements), if you really need to - there are pushies even for hours in the Finnair application and there is an airport application with pushes. But in general, there is a very convenient navigation and a lot of information, so it’s difficult to get lost or forget. Inscriptions in the main languages ​​of the airlines, including Russian.


Parquet of the 60s is preserved in this hall.


Toilets are clean

For me, as a passenger, convenience began almost immediately - on the back of the screen showing the exit number (for those who are looking for their own), the local time is written (for those leaving the plane).


Retail is evenly spread throughout the building, without food courts and islets of something separate. You can go anywhere and not miss anything. There was a house on this particular spot where the host of the TV show lived, checking whether it was possible to exist at the airport for two months.




The business rooms are quiet and green. And yes, the Finnair business lounge has a bar and sauna.

Right at the exit to the common area from the flight there is a regular grocery store. There are very cheap toothbrushes, pasta, shampoos and Karelian pies in case you feel hungry. On departure, experienced airline employees took salted salmon there.

Baggage handling


When you hand over the bag, it immediately goes to the underworld. In the end, these trolleys should turn out, which the “tadpole” will pick up and pull to the plane:




There are often snowstorms, so there is a thing to hide from them

What and how it will be with the trolleys - the airport is not very important. Because someone’s handling (outsourcing or air carrier) works with them. But picking up the cart correctly is a whole quest. Imagine a flight to New York from Finland:
  1. Need to handle very dofiga bags regularly
  2. Take passengers with transfers for 50 and 40 minutes, checking their luggage and putting it in the trolleys on time.
  3. Handle a cat, a huge TV, hockey equipment, a plant and a library robot.
  4. Someone will get sick between transfers and he will ask for his suitcase with medicines.
  5. 15 , . , , ( ).


All bags drop into the labyrinth:



Receive trays:



Enter the system with a slope. This slope determines the maximum mass of a piece of baggage. The airline restriction is 10 kilograms less than the actual capabilities of the tape:



This whole system is a layout of several types of modules:



Each module turns on when baggage is received, moves it a couple of meters and turns off. Here's the junction:


10-15 years of MTBF during normal maintenance are claimed. By the way, the system does not stop for maintenance, because the airport does not sleep, but simply routes in a slightly different way, bypassing the scheduled place.

Baggage can be lost for three reasons:
  1. We didn’t manage to load due to a long check (for example, manually reviewing some tricky thing when you expected to transfer to MCT).
  2. .
  3. . — , . , , .




To speed up the viewing of luggage, they tried to minimize the procedure for calling a passenger to "Ahhh, what is it with you?" X-ray units make a layered X-ray (this is like CT), and operators along with robots (who are also not here) can very accurately figure out what is inside of you. If in doubt, judging by the abandoned phrase “we have keys to almost all the suitcases in the world,” an experienced bear cub works in the service. Well, if the luggage was packed - the package is cut, the suitcase opens, closes, but does not repack. In principle, there are so many where.

To recognize the tags, they put cells with a bunch of cameras that remove the bag even from below.



92-96 percent of tags are recognized automatically with minimum FRR / FPR. The rest of the tags or jammed so that the piece is not visible, or sunk somewhere in the folds of the bag, so that the camera will not reach. Such a bag is automatically routed to the point of manual verification.



Well, about jumping bags from the tape simply - in the entire maze there are cameras that also know how to recognize situations when the luggage went to the wrong place. Therefore, there is light in this dungeon: you have to walk and pick up bags, and less often - serve the modules.


There are 15 kilometers of conveyor, and in addition to the main routes, there are also backup ones in case of breakdowns.

But this is the drive before loading onto the carts:



As you can see, each bag is stored separately. Pay attention to this box:



She takes the tray from the tape and carries it to the library. A bit like modern bottle vending machines with a tray. The technology was developed on jukeboxes with bars for bars. So, if someone needs a bag during a transplant, or if someone needs to be removed from the flight, the frame will simply pull out one specific bag from the store and give it upstairs. All. So remember, when someone writes about an innovative automatic warehouse with robots, he already works here. Some years. Not as you might expect, but it works.

When luggage arrives at the system, it also passes part of the route. With Vneshengen tags - checked and rides for extradition. With intra-Schengen flight tags - just going for extradition.



But oversized baggage, animals and stuff - with your hands.

Metrics:
  • 5 seconds for recognition of the passenger’s hand luggage, 7 minutes for the passage of 500 passengers through the checkpoint.
  • The critical waiting time for border guards is 15 minutes (this is a robust value, there are emissions with mowing).
  • Baggage for a flight inside Schengen - 2 minutes inside the system (without unloading and loading). External flight - about 15 minutes.
  • An additional corridor to the checkpoint opens to the critical transfer, and the aircraft takes priority in parking to the telescope close to the center of the airport terminal.

All. Thanks to Matti Lehto (HPD, the closest Russian position is the airport development director) and Maye Ilvonen from the HEL press service.

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