AirHelp – Your Airport Assistant

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

An Android and IOS application to assist travelers during their visit to the airport.

OBJECTIVE

In the financial year 2020, the total air passenger traffic in India reached more than 200 million passengers. With most of the world recovering from the pandemic situation, this is bound to increase. With such a high influx of passengers, airports need to eliminate manual processes and enhance the visitor’s experience at the airport.

Due to this, oftentimes there’s poor parking lot management with high waiting time in car check-in and check-out booths. Secondly, every year, ticket printing results in more than 100-200 million papers being wasted since the tickets would eventually end up in dustbins. Moreover, many passengers do not avail shopping in airport stores due to lack of knowledge of retail stores present followed by the huge distance between the stores in some airports. In the era where everything can be ordered online, providing a similar experience is essential. Lastly, sudden changes in flight timings or even departure gates may cause one to miss their flights. To tackle this, airports need to make frequent announcements that go against the principle of Silent Airport.

APPLICATIONS AND USAGES

Smart Parking System: The smart parking system attempts to make most check-in and check-out systems self-sufficient without the requirement of someone to be present in the kiosk. It can automatically detect vehicle number plates and extract the alphanumeric data from them using Image Processing and Machine Learning. It can smartly allocate parking spaces close to the airport gate to ensure minimum commute time to the airport.

E-Ticket: The E-Ticketing System aims to nullify the requirement of hard-copy tickets during security checks, luggage dropping, and while serving in-flight refreshments. The E-Ticketing System can be digitally be verified by the airport authorities and information related to luggage, refreshments, and security checks can be added only by the appropriate airport authorities. The E-Ticketing System would be fully secure to ensure no tampering.

Smart Entertainment Shop: from airport stores from your phone and then later collect it from the store or have it delivered to you. Order food from your phone and either have it delivered to you by some authority or takeaway from the restaurant itself. Book services like massage, spas, and other amenities available at the airport from your phone. Personalized recommendation based on past behavior and similar user behavior.

Flight Information: Every flight information would be added to the application automatically when the user books the flight. Once booked, the user would be notified of any delays, early departures, or cancellations on the app itself. Moreover, if the departure gate changes, it would be notified on the application thus ensuring a „Silent Airport“ where no announcements are made Baggage collection information would also be shown on the application itself thus enhancing the arrival experience.

Quiver – Your Airport Assistant: A personalized chatbot that can assist you during your time at the airport. It can help you fetch your e-tickets, get flight-related information or even assist you in finding your lost belongings.

All personal details, confidential information, e-tickets, etc. are stored locally on the user’s phone. Minimal information is transmitted to the backend to ensure no privacy issues and utmost regards to security.

IMPLEMENTATION

FrontEnd: React, React Native Backend: NodeJS, Flask Database : PostgreSQL Cloud Services: Azure Compute Instance, Azure Database, Azure App Services, Azure DevOps Additional: OpenCV, Deep Learning, and Machine Learning

Future Scope and Plans

If successful, a major improvement the application can have is integration with the following Government services

Aadhar: With the power of Aadhar, facial verification could be automated using images available with UIDAI.

DigiLocker: Using DigiLocker would remove the requirements to provide a hard copy of identification departments when required

Lastly, This application can be deployed as a centralized application in airports all over India. Since it would be deployed on Azure using auto-scaling services, it would ensure smooth usage even during peak travel seasons.