The Airport User-Experience Simulation System (A-UX) is a fully immersive and interactive desktop and virtual reality system that may be adapted to any airport. A-UX is designed to support travellers with disabilities and travel anxiety, provide empathy training to airport staff, and facilitate interactive project review.
About
A-UX was developed by Karl Traeger, Principal and Aviation Sector Leader at Architectus, one of the largest architecture and design practices in Australasia. At the practice and over a 25-year career in the industry, Karl has been instrumental in the design and delivery of major airport terminal projects across the Asia-Pacific, including in China, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and all major cities in Australia.
Development Process
Through A-UX there is potential to connect the experiences of departure and arrival journeys at airports across the globe, allowing people with disabilities and travel anxiety everywhere to overcome challenges and experience more of the world.
Working with Unity Engine, we are on the path to developing an interface for airline website flight booking pages. When a traveller completes a booking through this interface, a button for A-UX would appear, linking them to their chosen airport departure and destination experiences.
User access point on your website
Airport Engagement Guide
Upon contacting us, members of our team will conduct a meeting to define your chosen departures and arrivals journey routes and the associated development requirements for your airport.
The A-UX models are developed at no cost to the airport beyond some time required for your nominated representative to establish our cooperation agreement, data transfer permissions, terms and conditions, and for you to provide us with the relevant existing data, photos and models for the agreed A-UX routes
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Taking all the pointcloud data, reference plans and photographs that you have given us for the journey pathway we convert all of this information into highly optimised assets that can then be used for VR.
We will recreate a fully interactive VR experience for the selected Departures and Arrivals journey in your airport, optimising it for realtime 3D experience utilising a Quest headset and for desktop computer.
Together with the airport environment, we will also be recreating fully interactive and functional models for the equipment that passengers may use on their journey through the airport, including check-in kiosks, ABDs, security screening, emigration, and immigration equipment. We will recreate these machines exactly to their current specifications, how they are operated and create the different boarding passes, bag tags or receipts that they produce for that particular passenger itinerary.
After building out all of the interactive 3D assets and recreating all the processes of the Airport and the machines within it, we will add all of the lighting and sounds particular to your airport to complete a totally immersive experience. The user will be able to depart at the entrance of your airport on their journey pathway and walk their way through every step of the journey to board a plane. And upon arrival back through your airport they will be able to thoroughly experience their arrival experience from the plane, through immigration, collecting their bags at reclaim and leave the airport through customs, just as they will in real life.
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We will also create a version of your airport pathway that provides for staff empathy training. This will include a simulation of what it would be like to be a passenger with certain non-visible disabilities that can lead to elevated levels of anxiety and potentially to a sense of overstimulation. This function will be made available as an additional download.
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Once-a-year we will reach out to you to acquire any data that represents upgrades to parts of your building or equipment along the departures and arrivals journey routes. We will then use this information to update the A-UX model and ensure that your A-UX airport pathway experience is current and up to date.
FAQs
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Ultimately, we are looking for as much data, photos, point cloud surveys and existing digital models as possible for your selected departures and arrivals routes. The more data and reference that we have access to, the better our result will be.
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A-UX is to be hosted on Unity Engine's servers you will not be required to set up any new infrastructure, provision of server space or time for data management. The only change you could make, if you chose to, is to create a link to A-UX in your customer care section of your website.
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The A-UX team is working with Disability Service Providers, Airlines, Airports and Unity to develop and coordinate multiple approaches to enable access A-UX as a downloadable App , across VR, desktop and mobile devices, that will suit different people.
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A-UX will not include any information about any security setups or camera positions. A-UX only simulates the passenger experience of going through an airport, anything that does not relate will not be included in the experience. However, A-UX does simulate the immigration prosses and the function of the machines involved. This simulation is not developed in such a way as to provide anyone the opportunity to understand and exploit any vulnerability in security or border control spaces.
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For the full interactive experience the A-UX VR application is operated as a standalone application on a Quest headset. A desktop computer and mobile device version will soon also be available with limited spatial and equipment interactivity.
A-UX is focused on providing a simulation of the Airport passenger experience and is not designed to be a google maps like tool.
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A-UX does not currently have a deployable demo. However, our team is available to demonstrate the system in person or in an on-line conference call.
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Upon download of the initial A-UX system and the first departures and arrivals journey the only additional costs would be attached to further downloads of A-UX experiences at other airports of your choice.
Contact us
Karl Traeger
Aviation Sector Leader
Morgan Davies
3D Simulation Lead
