One of the coolest concepts that grabbed my attention while watching the hit blockbusters, Minority Report was the completely automated road traffic of the future, where the cars were turned into luxury pods and were driven by computers, while the passengers carried on with their daily activities, without even having to give a second thought about the car ahead of them.
Now, a similar transportation system has been brought into effect at London’s Heathrow Airport. This all new system has been the brainchild of ARRK R&D Limited, a branch of the ARRK Group that consists of 120 companies and specializes in the research and development of composites, metals and plastics, all the while creating innovative and cutting edge prototypes for aerospace, automotive, construction, medical equipment and transportation industry.
The all new project called, ULTra Personal Rapid Transportation (PRT) is specifically based on the PLM (Product Life Cycle Management) platform devised by Dassault Systems. As per the project, self driven vehicles have been designed and developed for the Heathrow airport, that operate on a dedicated elevated track and are programmed to carry their passengers to their destinations at a constant velocity of 40 Kph. This one of a kind transportation system allows its operators to eliminate the cost of drivers and at the same preserve the environment, as these luxury pods are known for their zero carbon emissions.
According to Jason Roberts (Director, ARRK),
“Our work was carried out using the Dassault Systèmes PLM suite. This delivered the advantages that we experience in our other work, which include the benefit of operating on a single software platform for prototyping, tooling, testing and surfacing. Suspension durability testing of was carried out using ABAQUS FEA from SIMULIA and the software helped to provide the vehicles with their highly accurate tracking characteristics.”
Via Product Design & Development
