Need help getting around Miami’s airport? You can now catch a ride on a driverless chair
Have you noticed futuristic chairs rolling by themselves through Miami International Airport?
The “autonomous power chairs” are helping travelers with mobility issues get to their gates. Then the driverless chairs ride back solo to their hubs to wait for their next riders.
The new chairs were made by Tokyo-based WHILL Mobility Services. Envoy Air, a subsidiary of American Airlines, bought 10 of them to serve customers who need some assistance. No public money has been used so far for the chairs, said Greg Chin, communications director for the Miami-Dade Aviation Department.
The chairs run 120 trips a day at Miami International, a fraction of the more than 2,900 daily wheelchair requests that Envoy gets.
The new chairs are meant “to supplement the service we provide to customers, not to replace” traditional wheelchairs with attendants, said Migdoel Rosa, a vice president at Envoy in charge of the Miami hub.
There are no plans to expand the fleet at Miami International. “Ten is good for now,” Rosa said.
At a public event Friday at the airport to formally introduce the 6-month-old service, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said she was “very, very proud … to take this bold step to test this new technology.” The mayor has dealt with criticism of conditions at the county-run Miami International Airport in recent months, including busted elevators and a shutdown of the Skytrain transit system.
How do the Miami airport chairs work?
The power chairs have been several years in the making and were tested in 2019 at Haneda Airport in Tokyo and at Dallas/Forth Worth International.
The chairs arrived in Miami in December. Here’s how they work:
If travelers request assistance, once they move through airport security they are guided to one of four hubs. There, passengers await a ride to their gates. The power chairs are used on a first-come, first-served basis. You can’t request one.
When a chair becomes available, an attendant asks travelers if they would be comfortable using one of the new vehicles. If the answer is yes, the attendant assists them into the chair, and inputs their gate on a small attached screen.
From there, the chair drives the traveler through the busy airport, repeatedly emitting a three-toned chime to alert people in the terminal of its presence. The chair is equipped with cameras and sensors to avoid collisions with people walking through the terminals. If someone steps in front of the chair, it stops, then a voice asks the obstruction to step aside.
Once the chair has brought a traveler to the gate, an Envoy attendant helps the rider into a seat to wait for a flight. From there, the chair either will return to its hub or can be programmed to move to another gate.
“It was easy,” said Sandra Gasca, 55, after one of the power chairs delivered her to her gate on Friday afternoon. Gasca, who was visiting Miami from Cali, Colombia, described the chair as “comfortable” and said the speed was “fine.”
Who can use the airport chairs?
The power chairs operate in Concourse D and E at Miami International, and are available for American Airlines customers. They are for departures or connecting passengers.
The chairs are designed for customers who have difficulty walking long distances, mostly elderly travelers or people with injuries. But people who ride them should have some ability to walk.
In addition, if travelers have bags too large to fit in the container on the back of the power chair, or if they are traveling with a support animal, they cannot ride and will instead be taken to the gate in a traditional wheelchair pushed by an attendant.
“As long as you fit in the chair and feel comfortable with the movements,” said Rosa, then the power chair will get you where you need to go.
