Shinmaywa Industries, Ltd.

Takashi Kunitake

Taichi Nakamura

Hideaki Dobashi

A passenger boarding bridge is capable of avoiding docking by backward travel of travel wheels. The passenger boarding bridge includes: a rotunda connected to a terminal building and supported to be rotatable horizontally; a tunnel unit, whose proximal end is connected to the rotunda, that is extendable and retractable; a cab provided at a distal end of the tunnel unit and configured to be docked with an aircraft; travel wheels supporting the tunnel unit and configured to travel forward and backward in changeable directions; an operating device that is operated to input an operation command to the travel wheels; and a determiner configured to repeatedly perform determination whether or not the current direction of the forward travel of the travel wheels is within a predetermined range during a period from when the cab starts being moved from a predetermined position until the cab is docked with the aircraft.

Passenger boarding bridge

A detection system includes: a passenger boarding bridge connected to a terminal building; a camera on the passenger boarding bridge; and an image processor that detects an entrance of an aircraft from a captured image captured by the camera. The image processor includes: a search area image generator that generates a search area image by demarcating a predetermined area including part of the captured image; and a search performer that performs a search to determine whether or not the entrance is present within the search area image. The search area image generator shifts the predetermined area on the captured image from one side toward the other side of the aircraft in a direction of an aircraft axis of the aircraft to sequentially generate the search area image. The search performer repeatedly performs the search while changing the search area image by using multiple search area images that are sequentially generated.

Detection system for detecting entrance of aircraft

A passenger boarding bridge includes: a rotunda rotatable about a vertical axis; a tunnel unit; a cab; a lifting/lowering mechanism; and a travel unit. A control method includes, at a time of docking the cab with an entrance of an aircraft: calculating relative positional information indicating a position of the entrance as seen from the cab when the travel unit is at a movement start position; calculating positional information of a destination position based on the movement start position and the relative positional information in a case where a distance from the movement start position to the destination position is less than a horizontal distance from the vertical axis to a center point of the travel unit; calculating a target travel angle; and controlling the travel unit such that a travel angle of the travel unit is kept to the target travel angle during traveling.

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Takarazuka, Japan

Takashi Kunitake