System Components

Hardware: Sensors and Compute

VossBridge utilizes commercially available, certified, reliable, and highly secure hardware components. The weatherproofed sensors are mounted directly on the cabin of the passenger boarding bridge.

• High-Resolution 3D LiDAR: A high-resolution 3D LiDAR system captures the surroundings in the form of a centimeter-accurate point cloud. This guarantees reliable operation in heavy rain, dense fog, and snowfall - conditions where purely camera-based systems reach their technical limitations.
• Industrial Cameras: Integrated industrial cameras handle the semantic recognition of fuselage and locate the doors.
• Rangefinders monitor the apron and ensure that collisions are avoided.
• Powerful Edge Computing: The powerful edge computing system is mounted directly inside the cabin. It processes all sensor data streams in real time on-site, thereby achieving minimal latency. Autonomous operation runs completely autarkically and without a permanent connection to a central server.

Software: The AI-Powered Control System

The VossBridge AI-powered system reliably detects the aircraft's parking position as well as the spatial position of the door. It always steers the bridge precisely to and away from the door without ever touching the aircraft except when docked. Throughout the entire journey, it uses sensor data to continuously track the autonomous jetway's position relative to the aircraft door and dynamically adjusts the path being followed.

VossBridge's AI software translates sensory data streams into precise physical movements:

• Sensor Fusion: In the initial phase, the data streams from LiDAR and the camera merge into a statistically optimized estimate of the aircraft's position and orientation. Even with noisy or incomplete sensor data, the aircraft type is identified flawlessly.
• Path Planning: In the next step, the system calculates the mathematically precise approach path to the aircraft door.
• Fine Control: From a distance of two to three meters, the sensor-guided AI takes over the millimeter-accurate fine control, while all existing mechanical safety mechanisms of the bridge are actively monitored.
• Real-Time Control Commands: The control system translates the computed path into real-time control commands for the electromechanical or hydraulic drives of the passenger boarding bridge.

Because VossBridge was designed from the ground up to be hardware-independent, the software can be flexibly implemented across the installed base of all common bridge types.