Vanderlande’s Mark Lakerveld: Eindhoven Airport lives up to its name as a smart airport that wants to continuously improve airport processes through innovation. To achieve its goals, it brings the innovative forces from the Brainport region together and uses the airport as a testing ground. For Vanderlande, Eindhoven Airport is perfectly located - close to home - to test the latest technologies in a live environment.

Eindhoven Airport’s Ivar van der Smaal: Of course, innovations are also being tested at other airports in the Netherlands. Eindhoven Airport, Rotterdam The Hague Airport, Lelystad Airport and Schiphol Airport are all part of Royal Schiphol Group.

In order to develop the most sustainable and high-quality (hub) airports in the world, we are fully committed to innovation. To this end, the airports work closely with each other and with external partners such as airlines and universities, as well as with business partners and start-ups like Vanderlande and BagsID, to validate new developments for the multimodal hubs of the future. Using regional airports as our innovation testing ground enables us to exchange gained knowledge and scale up.

ML: Vanderlande's strategy is to use automated solutions to improve the end-to-end baggage and passenger process. We are aware that new technologies will play a major role in this. Vanderlande ideally likes to innovate together with its customers to ensure that our solutions are closely aligned with market needs. The initiative to join forces was born from the already close cooperation between Vanderlande and Eindhoven Airport, and both parties’ ambition to optimise baggage and passenger processes even further.

Depending on the nature of the test, Vanderlande and Eindhoven Airport collaborate with various technology and design companies, and with knowledge institutes. For example, we have joined forces with BagsID for the trial phase of a new baggage identification technology.

IS: Eindhoven Airport has a broad regional network and we obviously speak to each other regularly about ambitions, challenges and developments. We look at where we can strengthen each other and how we can work together to make the region even better. We have been working together with Vanderlande for many years and this consortium arose out of the shared ambition to optimise the airport process even further.

ML: Already at an early stage, we carried out successful live tests at Rotterdam The Hague Airport. The lessons we learned here substantially contributed to the further development of this solution, and thus also to implementing the solution at Lelystad Airport and at other locations around the world. Rotterdam The Hague Airport will again be the testing ground, as will Eindhoven Airport, for the autonomous vehicles on the apron, which are used to transfer suitcases to and from the aircraft.

ML: In August, Vanderlande carried out trials with the autonomous baggage vehicles at Rotterdam The Hague Airport. 5D drawings were made of the trial. Programmers are now writing the software of the vehicles. Before the end of this year, testing will commence on various types of autonomous vehicles at Rotterdam The Hague Airport and Eindhoven Airport.

ML: Having the autonomous vehicles on the apron, the process quality becomes more predictable and robust, leading to even greater certainty that every suitcase will always arrive at its correct destination. It will also help improve the information provided to the handling staff, as well as to the passengers, about where suitcases are located at any moment. This further automation will also increase the safety level on the platform, both in terms of the risk of accidents and in terms of keeping the required distance between people.