News

The Japanese Civil Aviation Bureau (JCAB) has announced on March 2nd that for the first time in Japan, Autonomous baggage tractors for real operations at Narita will be introduced. JAL will used this vehicle following a POC led in cooperation with Narita International Airport (NAA), airport authority that operates Narita.

This initiative is to address the concerning issue of lack of manpower due to growing demand in air transportation.The introduction will take place on a vehicle road between the Narita Terminal 2 and the baggage sorting satellite.

The transportation of luggage will be performed with the autonomous vehicle, TractEasy manufactured by TLD and offered by Smart Airport Systems. A safety driver will remain seated inside the vehicle for this level 3 operations.

The Terminal 2 satellite is currently closed due to the current reduced traffic. However, the actual operations are planned to start once the satellite will reopen. The Japanese Ministry of Transport has set a committee to promote the introduction of autonomous vehicle inside airports and publicly offered companies to participate to a POC. JAL has applied for this program and carried out from Oct 2019 to March 2020 this test with this autonomous vehicle.

With this introduction to real operations, towing tractors will be able to drive autonomously and transport cargo. The Japanese Ministry of Transport is also carrying some POC regarding the transportation of people and is planning to introduce of real passengers in the near future. This year on February, ANA has made some test at Haneda with autonomous large bus destined to transport employees.

The Japanese Ministry of Transport will continue to collaborate with airport authorities and airlines in order to achieve full driverless level 4 by the year 2025.