Aston University and Aurrigo International plc KTP 24_25 R3

A single software platform will take control of airport baggage tugs and cargo loaders away from human operators and hand it to the vehicles themselves. Aurrigo International, a UK autonomous-vehicle company, currently runs its airport fleet from a central control room where people direct each vehicle. That approach limits how many vehicles one operator can manage and creates a bottleneck in decision-making. This project builds a decentralised command system in which each vehicle negotiates its own routes, schedules, and priorities with the others in real time. If the platform works, airports could shift from human-supervised fleets of a few vehicles to fully autonomous fleets of dozens or hundreds. Baggage and cargo would move faster, with fewer delays caused by human reaction times or shift changes. The system would also adapt dynamically to disruptions—a delayed flight, a broken conveyor, a security alert—without waiting for a central controller to reassign tasks. The same software architecture could later be adapted for autonomous logistics in warehouses, ports, or distribution centres.