Simulations in Experior are an important part of Exruptive’s development of a new integrated security scanning system that can scan passengers’ hand luggage in one go and eliminate long lines at airport security.

“Take out all your electronic devices and place your liquids in separate plastic bags!”. We’ve all been there: In line at the security check in the airport, stressed out and annoyed about the long wait and having to repack computers and deodorants. But no more, says the Danish company Exruptive.

They have developed a system that will eliminate the long lines at airport security.

When arriving at the airport, passengers grab one of Exruptive’s “intelligent trolleys” and scans their boarding pass on its mounted tablet that guides them to the shortest line at security.

Once there, passengers simply place their hand luggage – with electronics and liquids still inside – in the trolley and push it into Exruptive’s scanner that automatically scans and conveys the trolley to the other side of security. The passengers are then safely guided through the airport and to the right gate by the tablet on the trolley.

A smart solution to a stressful problem at airports worldwide. But it is also a complex solution to develop, and that is why Exruptive used simulations in Experior when designing the system.

With Experior, Exruptive found the optimal setup

“We needed to better understand the dimensions of the system and the influence of different parameters on the overall performance,” says Henrik Sølund, Technical Project Manager at Exruptive.

Together with Xcelgo, Exruptive developed a 3D model of the system in Experior and performed simulations on the model to find the optimal setup.

“In Experior, we can very easily tweak all the different parameters and variables, such as the number of trolleys and the percentage of trolleys that has to be manually inspected,” Henrik Sølund says.

Depending on the variables, they were then able to change the dimensions of the system by changing the number of scanners, inlets and outlets, buffer lines, number of operators etc. to optimize the solution.

”Without Experior, we would have over dimensioned the system. Now we were able to reduce the number of components and operators and still achieve our goal,” Henrik Sølund says.

That means that the overall investment and operating costs for Exruptive’s future customers will be lower than otherwise possible.

“Now we know how our optimal setup is going to look, and our solution is more attractive for our customers,” says Henrik Sølund.

The testing showed that each scanner can scan 450 passengers or more per hour – double to triple that of the current solutions where plastic trays are scanned individually.

Next steps are passenger flow simulations and sales simulations

The next step for Xcelgo and Exruptive’s cooperation is to also simulate the passenger flow in which each passenger goes through the body scanner. By running simulations with both the trolley flow and passenger flow, there will be even more variables to tweak and more scenarios to test – and in the end an even more optimized setup.

Down the line, Exruptive also have plans to also use the 3D model in Experior as a sales tool:

”The idea is to feed the model with real data from the airport in question to demonstrate the influence of our solution on security lines, number of scanners needed and personal requirements,” Henrik Sølund says.

The sales phase is still some time out in the future though. Right now, Exruptive are testing on a physical prototype in Varde, Denmark, and they expect to get the system certified in 2019. When that happens, the system will be installed in one or more airports worldwide for pilot tests.

“There is great demand for our solution, so now we need to get it ready for the market,” says Henrik Sølund.

Hopefully, we will all soon get to experience what can now seem almost impossible: A stress-free security process at the airport.