Huawei Showcases Future-Oriented Smart Airport Solutions at HUAWEI CONNECT 2018's Smart Airport Forum

News provided by

12 Oct, 2018, 09:06 GMT

End-to-End Facial Recognition and Unified Display of Flight Support Activities to Transform the Aviation Industry

SHANGHAI, Oct. 12, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of HUAWEI CONNECT 2018, Huawei held a Smart Airport Forum to discuss the latest developments, technological trends, and informatization practices in smart airport construction with guests from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), Shenzhen Airport Group, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), and Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques (SITA). Huawei shared its innovative smart airport solutions, as well as its collaboration with ecosystem partners such as The Second Research Institute of CAAC, Baidu, Xi'an Yuetai Science & Technology Co., Ltd., and SuperMap. Their joint innovations will help industry customers construct intelligent and passenger-friendly airports, and provide new approaches for the digital transformation of airports worldwide.

Zhang Rui, Vice Director of the Airport Department of CAAC, made a keynote speech during the Forum. He outlined the historical achievements of airport development, pointed out the significance of building safe, green, smart, and culture-enriched airports, and shared some general ideas for future-oriented airport construction as well as current progress. On behalf of the CAAC, he called upon all parties inside and outside the aviation industry, especially outstanding enterprises like Huawei, to participate in building future-oriented airports and realizing a promising blueprint through collaborative efforts.

Zhang Rui explained that airports of the future will feature refined and visualized operations management, personalized passenger services, intelligent and efficient operational processes, and IoT-based fully-connected resources and devices. The Airport Department of CAAC, TravelSky, the Civil Aviation University of China, and Huawei are working together to formulate future-oriented airport standards, according to the principle of "one guideline, multiple specifications, and one evaluation system."

In his speech, Zhang Huai, CIO of Shenzhen Airport Group, commented that safety, efficiency, and passenger experience are the priorities of Shenzhen Airport in all aspects of development. Driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Airport is dedicated to providing scenario-specific services, managing situations via platforms, and opening platforms to ecosystem partners, in an attempt to reconstruct the flow of airport information and empower smart airport services. Focusing on customer requirements, the airport will continue to improve safety, efficiency, and passenger travel experience.

Yu Dong, President of the Industry Marketing & Solution Dept of Huawei Enterprise BG, pointed out that digital innovation in the transportation industry is accelerating. Safety, efficiency, and passenger experience are catalysts for intelligent transportation transformation. In the field of smart transportation, Huawei puts forward a "platform + ecosystem" strategy and focuses on ICT infrastructure, such as AI, cloud computing, big data, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Huawei hopes to work with partners to build a platform and ecosystem featuring open, win-win, and encouraging sustainability, which will enable ecosystem partners to play to their strengths in developing a variety of applications on the platform.

Wang Guoyu, General Manager of Transportation Solution Dept of Huawei Enterprise BG, said that Huawei has never stopped its journey towards future-oriented airports. Now, the concept of Smart Airports is becoming a reality, representing the value of Huawei's cooperation with customers and partners in constructing interconnected, intelligent, and people-centric airports of the future. Huawei will continue to work with ecosystem partners to maximize the benefits that they bring to airports, provide airport managers with agile and intelligent operations management solutions, and foster a smart air travel ecosystem.

End-to-End Facial Recognition Helps to Deliver Better Passenger Experiences

With the development of technologies such as AI and facial recognition, people have greater demands for intelligent travels. Airports face great challenges due to rapid business growth, air travel becoming widely available, and more diverse passenger requirements. Huawei thoroughly understands the pressure on the industry and showcases a complete suite of smart airport solutions that help address these needs.

The Smart VIP Lounge Solution provides high-quality services for targeted passengers based on facial recognition technologies. Huawei's HD video surveillance system, face image database, and facial recognition algorithms, plus SuperMap's Geographical Information System (GIS), are used to identify, locate, and track passengers in the lounges. This technology makes it possible to deliver specific boarding reminders to individual passengers, thereby optimizing the lounge environment and travel experience.

The traditional Flight Information Display System (FIDS) is a one-to-many flight display screen designed to serve all passengers simultaneously. Passengers must find their own flight information in the large number of flights listed, which is time-consuming. To address this laborious process, Huawei provides a smart FIDS based on facial recognition. A passenger only needs to have his or her face scanned in front of the display screen, and the smart FIDS identifies who the passenger is. The screen then shows the passenger's flight information and current location, as well as the quickest route to the boarding gate. This significantly improves both airports' service efficiency and passenger experience.

A Unified Display of Flight Support Activities Makes Airport Operations Safer and More Efficient

IoT applications can bring huge benefits to airlines and airports. The IoT-based achievements of Huawei include smart airfield ground lighting, smart aircraft stand allocation, and the positioning and management of unpowered devices at airfields. These innovative solutions greatly improve the IT application, intelligence, and security of airport management.

Huawei's cloud-based big data platform and Baidu's intelligent algorithms are used to support automatic and intelligent stand allocation, improve operating efficiency, and reduce conflicts in stand allocation. This solution helps complete allocations for more than 1,000 flights in a matter of minutes, compared to four or five hours using traditional methods. Based on dynamic stand allocation information updates, available jet bridges and contact stands can be fully utilized to save passengers the trouble of taking shuttle buses to remote stands. In addition to greater efficiency, this solution improves airports' emergency response capabilities when a large number of flight delays require the quick reallocation of aircraft stands.

The IoT-based smart airfield ground lighting solution resolves the problem of traditional ground lights which cannot be monitored and controlled in real time. The Huawei solution reduces the cost of manual inspection by more than 10,000 person-hours per year. This solution, together with the Advanced-Surface Movement Guidance and Control System (A-SMGCS) and single-light monitoring system provided by the Second Research Institute of CAAC helps to guide aircraft taxiing using automatically monitored airfield ground lights, contributing to greater efficiency and safety of aircraft on runways and taxiways.

Huawei's unpowered-device management solution incorporates ultra-broadband, high-accuracy locating technology to implement real-time positioning based on base stations. Using Huawei's IoT platform and SuperMap's GIS platform, the system can display the historical tracks and real-time positions of unpowered devices, helping airfield management departments to manage and mobilize unpowered devices.

Huawei is committed to working with customers in the long term and takes a future-oriented approach to drive enterprise digital transformation through the power of the platform. So far, 211 of the Fortune Global 500 companies (including 48 Fortune Global 100 companies) have selected Huawei as their digital transformation partner. For more information, please visit https://e.huawei.com/en/solutions/industries/transportation.