Self-driving Snowplows Debut At Norwegian Airport

Snow in any quantity present on a runway is regarded as a hazard, so most airports in snowy latitudes have facilities to remove it as quickly as possible to prevent flight delays.

The problem is that this doesn’t just involve a costly investment in plows, but also in trained crews that must be available on a 24-hour basis even when it reaches subzero temperatures.

Since it snows a lot in Norway, two self-driving snowplows developed by Yeti and Semcon were deployed at Fagernes Airport to demonstrate the current state of self driving technologies .

Each self-driving snowplows was 20 m (65 ft) long and 5.5 m (18 ft) wide and as a team were able to clear around 670 football fields ( 357,500 square meters ) per hour in a variety of weather conditions.

Standard snowplows are used and fitted with self-driving actuators. The system can download these patterns and monitor a number of vehicles that navigate using RTK GPS, an accurate form of position measurement, while they communicate using 4G modems.

Operators are also able to remotely control the plows from a control center.