Charlatte Autonom Trials Autonomous Baggage System at Frankfurt Airport

NAVYA and Charlatte Manutention have deployed their Tract Autonom AT135 system at the Frankfurt Airport in Germany as part of a trial. The Tract Charlatte AUTONOM TRACT AT135 will connect Terminal 2 of the Frankfurt Airport to the planned Terminal 3 over a distance of 8 km, or 4.97 miles.

The airport will deploy the system on two routes. One will take luggage trailers indoors and outdoors. The other will be for large cargo, outdoors only.

The companies are working together under the subsidiary Charlatte Autonom. They said the routes consider the different scenarios that an autonomous vehicle may encounter on an airport site. The system will have to cross paths with other vehicles, tractors, tankers, ground support equipment, and the airport site crew, they noted.

Charlatte Manutention produces electric baggage trailers and other industrial handling equipment used by airports and defense companies. The France-based company has 170 employees, spread throughout France, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

NAVYA aims at becoming the leading player in Level 4 autonomous mobility systems for passenger and goods transport. Its flagship product is the Autonom Shuttle, which it said is designed to transport passenger goods. The Paris-based company said it has sold more than 200 Autonom Shuttle units since 2015.

Charlatte Autonom formed in 2018

The companies formed Charlatte Autonom in 2018 to design and manufacture electric handling equipment for industrial and airport use. Together, they developed the AUTONOM TRACT AT135, an autonomous and electric system designed to transport goods. It was released in 2019.

“With more than 75.5 million passengers in 2019, Frankfurt Airport, Germany's largest airport and Europe's third largest airport serving the most international destinations, is an ideal site to test and evolve the Charlatte Autonom AT 135 Tract,” said Oliver Le Cormec, CEO of NAVYA. “Equipped with the latest NAVYA technologies, the Charlatte Autonom AT 135 is perfectly adapted to the just-in-time constraints of airports and we are pleased to be able to demonstrate the performance of our solution in such a complex environment.”

“This new opportunity will allow us to test the latest version of the Charlatte Autonom AT 135 Tract under real and particularly demanding conditions, with the aim of demonstrating a high service rate with our solution,” said Bastien Devaux, directeur général de Charlatte Manutention. “This is another step towards the deployment of automated solutions in the airport world."