Baggage Claim: Shoe Chip | |||||||||||||||||
To solve the problem of searching for your bags on the conveyor, how about a tracking chip, like the one that road runners tie to their shoe to mark finish time? Hmmm, but where to display the 'results' to the user? One big screen? Nah. The whole problem we are trying to solve is the Encroaching Searchers who Block views of bags. The Big Board would be no different. The solution would be in the Receipt, at Check-in. Instead of tagging (or in addition) the bag, the clerk would have, for each bag, a chip - buzzer pair. The chip goes on the bag. The buzzer is given to passenger. The buzzer is a dumb device that receives a transmission from the conveyor belt when its Code (that matches chip) is read. In summary: like a running race chip, the bag chip is read when it crosses the finish line (this info is stored in airline's database--i'm sure they'd want to track this info). The airline computer transmits signal to the receiver with corresponding code. In such a way, the receiver is like a pager. This arrangement is often used at restaurants to alert waiting list to open tables.
mpwizard, Jul 11 2007
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My experience is that all the luggage from the plane usually dumps onto the carousel inside of 10 minutes of the first bag showing up anyway. Larger carousels would be the answer but airport space is usually at a premium to begin with. A beeper isn't going to help if everyone's beeper is going off at the same time. Besides that, airport security concerns probably won't lend a lot of support for adding electronic locator devices to the payload.
I tag my luggage with bright, odd patterned cloth that makes it easy to spot. Then I position myself where I can see the luggage as it comes down the chute so I know when it's on the carousel. Then I politely ask to cut in and grab my bag. If I can't get in to get it I wait for the crowd to thin.
Here's a low-cost solution: The airline check-in clerk would offer to tag your bag with a wide piece of tape with a unique pattern and color scheme and give you a matching piece of tape to stick on your wallet or handbag. The tape would come from a blank-back roll that would printed by a special-purpose inkjet printer on the spot, to eliminate the need to have space for hundreds of tape patterns and ensure enough variety for tape-uniqueness on each flight.
On a full jumbo jet some patterns might have to be reused--but that would be OK because the printer would also print the owner's name on the tape (or a code number, if privacy were desired). The printer would also print a barcode identifying the passenger and his contact info to the airline's database, so he could be located in case the luggage got misdirected in transit.