Telematics

Tracking non-motorized equipment at airports

In order to meet increasingly strict requirements for security, productivity, and public image, national and international airport operators have chosen to better manage their fleets of non-motorized equipment (NME), without an on-board energy source, such as stepladders, towbars, luggage carriers, container carriers, etc. Their desire is to be able to identify and localize these items in real-time and share this new information with the various companies owning the equipment, while associating localization data with information related to air traffic.

Given the extensive surface areas to be covered in airport zones, some of our partners specializing in on-board geolocation and telematics solutions have met this challenge by integrating active RFID technology from ELA Innovation to identify NME equipment in real-time.

An active tag is attached to each piece of NME equipment. Real-time localization is achieved by several vehicles covering the zones. These vehicles are equipped with a geolocation unit and an active RFID reader. Using this solution continuously throughout the airport zone enables operators to keep inventory and localize all NME equipment on an ongoing basis.