Smart Airport

Skill LevelArea of FocusOperating SystemCloud Service/Platform
AdvancedIoT, Smart CitiesLinuxMicrosoft Azure IoT

This project is designed to utilize edge processing and machine vision to make low latency critical decisions in an airport environment. It demonstrates a simulated airport featuring elements necessary for critical decisions, airport security and efficient operations. As an example, luggage and people movement tracking is provided by machine vision and edge processing.

The project utilizes a DragonBoard™ 410c development board from Arrow Electronics with the Qualcomm® SnapdragonTM 410E embedded platform. This platform provides the processing power as well as cloud and sensor connectivity, a video camera, Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) sensors, and the ChordantTM platform based on the oneM2MTM standard that integrates devices, data and services.

Video image frames from the camera are acquired, processed and fed through a computer vision system. The vision algorithm performs inspections (e.g., missing luggage, extra luggage, and people movement detections). The results are used to make critical decisions (e.g., send security breach alerts). A lot of the processing is done by the embedded services running directly on the DragonBoard 410c, managed by the Chordant platform, including a message bus for flexible inter-service communications. Data captured is also published to the cloud for reporting and analysis.

Embedded services running on the DragonBoard 410c include:

  • MN-CSE gateway services defined by the oneM2M standard
  • Video processing services that include MJPEG frame acquisition, frame throttle, frame preprocessor, and computer vision
  • Alerts that activate local status output via the GPIO connection on the Board
  • Telemetry acquisition for Bluetooth® Low Energy sensor data
  • oneM2M protocol bridge for bi-directional communication with the cloud

There are many scenarios that involve complex heterogeneous environments where critical decisions need to be made fast. Airports, venues and smart cities are all great examples of this. In any of these scenarios, customer experience is very important, but accidents or security breaches can be detrimental.

By combining the Snapdragon™ 410E embedded platform’s multi-connectivity and edge processing capabilities with the Chordant platform’s capability to unify data, devices and services, there are many development possibilities. In the airport example, the ultimate outcome was to provide a seamless traveler experience while helping to deliver efficient and profitable operations for the airports.

Project components and architecture for SMART Airport with DragonBoard 410c Project components and architecture for SMART Airport with DragonBoard 410c

Materials Required / Parts List / Tools

Source Code / Source Examples / Application Executable

Additional Resources

Build / Assembly

Project displayed at Mobile World Congress 2018 Project displayed at Mobile World Congress 2018

DragonBoard 410c used for the Smart Airport project DragonBoard 410c used for the Smart Airport project