Towards Automation of Apron Services: A Theoretical Framework for Determining Equipment Requirements in Manipulator Design

Aircraft turnaround efficiency and reliability is crucial for maximizing airport capacity and airline profitability, driving significant interest in automation of turnaround tasks. While systems are close to deployment in some areas (such as autonomous baggage transport tugs), the majority of aircraft turnaround tasks consist of manipulation-intensive hose/cable connection and disconnection, and hatch/panel opening and closing. Due to the expense of such systems, a design for automated ground servicing ideally shares mobile manipulators between tasks, while remaining optimal in a time sense (does not incur any delays). However, the task mix of aircraft turnaround is relatively heterogeneous, and fully generalpurpose platforms designed to be capable of completing all turnaround tasks are likely to be extremely expensive. This paper addresses this challenge of setting design requirements for mobile manipulators to perform a selected set of turnaround tasks by proposing a mixed integer model formulation that sets mobile manipulator platform requirements, and simultaneously assigns them to specific tasks, optimizing for cost via platform sharing while avoiding delays. We run this model using a set of estimated task requirement and time figures, and show that across different turnaround time targets, the ideal configuration for shared manipulator platforms consists of one platform type handling lightweight tasks at lower heights, one handling highpayload tasks at lower heights, and one handing taller heights.