MAI Students Developed a Service for Hand Luggage Valuation of Passengers
One of the main issues that most airline passengers are worried about is the excess of their suitcase or hand luggage. It was the hand luggage the requirements for which have recently become much tougher for a number of air carriers. To help the passengers understand whether they were overdoing with personal things that they plan to take on board, decided at Moscow Aviation Institute (National Research University).
A student of the Faculty №8 “Information Technology and Applied Mathematics” of MAI, the captain of the Information Technologies Solutions & Services (ITSS) team, Maxim Yeremin (pictured in the center) presented a prototype of a chat-bot that can determine the size, dimension of carry-on luggage and give it a "certificate of conformity".
- To download a special app is not always comfortable, some people have just no time for it, - said the developer. - Therefore, my decision is a chat-bot for everyone! It will be available in all social networks that support work with bots at any time. It could be easily integrated into the structure of airline website.
“Smart” service analyzes size and dimension of the hand luggage, using machine learning algorithms, all work is done at the "cloud" of Microsoft Azure.
- A person sends a photo to a bot, the bot answers whether or not the hand luggage is suitable to be carried on board, - Maxim explains.
It should be noted that the project of MAI student won in the nomination "Assistant to passengers" from Aeroflot at the Digital Aviation Hackathon. The event was held in late May, the organizer was the IT-Center of MAI.
Interview with Mikhail Portnoy, Director of Project Management Department, Aeroflot
- Why it is important for Aeroflot to participate in such events? What do they give to your company?
- Aeroflot is an innovative company, we are striving not only to move with the times, but also to be a few steps ahead. Such concepts as big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning are no longer just abstract words, but technologies, used in company projects. Hackathon for us is a new forms of learning. While we do not have much experience in organization of Hackathon, participation in this event is such a preliminary step that allows us to feel the process from the inside and begin to evaluate its effectiveness for further use.
- How do you evaluate the outcome of Hackathon? Did the participants succeed in making a software product that could be used by Aeroflot?
- As a task for Hackathon , we proposed to make a prototype service of valuation the hand luggage size for a mobile app. This is an actual and useful function for passengers, especially after Aeroflot strictly began to check the size and weight of hand luggage. Although there is already a working example of such a service implemented in one of the app, the team went its own way and offered its own implementation. Moreover, the solution used a communication channel with the passenger via a chat-bot, which added a spice to the solution. I believe that the goal of the team was achieved. A working prototype was demonstrated. For a limited time, which was given to teams for implementation - this is a very good result.
- Is there any statistics, how many students and graduates of MAI work in Aeroflot?
- Now in PJSC Aeroflot – Russian Airlines there are about 500 graduates of MAI.
- How is a dialogue based with the university, are any joint projects planned?
Dialogue is a two-way process. Aeroflot cooperates with universities, including aviation, on a number of projects as the part of R & D. But we must remember that Aeroflot is a company with state participation. Therefore, any project, any cooperation precedes a number of regulatory procedures, including competitive procedures for choosing the best solution provider. Aeroflot has adopted Innovative Development Programs, a passport that is published on the company's website. It shows the directions that Aeroflot is potentially interested in. Therefore, we expect from higher education institutions, including MAI, more actively participation in the implementation of the innovative development programs, participation in our competitive procedures, as well as new ideas.
If you would like to participate in Digital Aviation Hackathon and work on real business cases of the best Russian and international companies, please, contact the IT-Center of MAI for more information.
Contacts:
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