Meet Spencer, the airport robot that will make sure you don’t miss your flight

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Meet Spencer, the airport robot that will make sure you don’t miss your flight

2015.11.28 by Amanda Connolly

Schiphol Airport is probably one of the most complicated airports to navigate around. That’s why KLM airlines has invested in a project to develop a robot that will help passengers find their way and avoid missing their flights in the Dutch airport.
Spencer is an armless friendly-looking robot that will be tested in Schiphol from the end of November.
The robot was created by a team that used research from five different Universities around Europe and is funded in part by the European Commission.
Spencer is equipped with a map of the airport and can survey its surroundings by measuring the distance to various obstructions using laser beams. Pre-loaded obstructions, such as walls and stairs, won’t be a problem for the robot, and neither will people, according to the researchers.
It’s trained to understand human behavior and won’t be running over groups in the airport; it will know to move around the people in its way.
Spencer is also programmed to be cognizant, so it will know how many people are in the group it’s helping to navigate and check at intervals that all of the people are still with it.
What might be an issue though, according to its creators, is objects that are left somewhere temporarily. Achim Lilienthal, one of the professors involved in the research, explained:

Objects that are temporarily permanent so to speak, are the most difficult to work around. We do not know, for instance, how long that luggage trolley will be parked in a particular spot, which makes it harder for the robot to determine its own location. We are working on a general map representation that includes and allows the robot to handle temporarily permanent objects.

This will be one of the things the group wants to learn when the first trial starts on November 30. That trial is set to last one week and then the research team will leverage the data collected and use it to streamline Spencer before it officially gets to work in March next year.

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Schiphol机场可能是安姆斯特丹地理结构最复杂的机场之一了，这也是为什么 KLM 要为该机场投入大笔资金开发机器人Spenser，本月底，该机器人将进入测试使用阶段。

Schiphol 作为欧洲第四大机场，有来自世界各地的旅客，经常有旅客因为迷失方向而错失航班，其实不仅对人们来说找路很困难，就连 Spenser 想要胜任领路这项工作，也并不是那么简单。

开发者为 Spenser 赋予了激光测距的能力，系统内部则嵌入了机场地图来进行导航。但据项目开发者 Achim Lilienthal 表示，机场内部玻璃非常多，这将干扰 Spenser 的测距能力，同时，由于人员密集，行李来往，对定位也将造成困扰，目前只能输入一项大致的地图进行导航。

不过，亮点在于，Spenser 能够识别人类行为，以及某些社会习惯。比如说，它不会鲁莽的冲过密集的人群，而是侧身慢慢通过。同时，在领路时会不时回头观望有没有旅客掉队。Achim Lilienthal 也说，这项技术可以用于所有机器人，以后无人驾驶汽车方面也可以应用。   

首次测试时间定于 11月30日，本次测试主要用于收集数据，提升 Spenser 的导航能力。