Making the Connection
Conceptualising autonomous aircraft ground power connection at Schiphol Airport through an adaptive roadmap
M.B. Krap (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
S.C. Santema – Mentor (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
G. Gomez Beldarrain – Mentor (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
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Abstract
Airports increasingly turn to automation to improve efficiency and reduce emissions, yet a gap often remains between proving a system works and integrating it into daily operations. At Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, the autonomous 400 Hz ground power connection, which allows an aircraft to switch off its engines/APU after arrival, illustrates this gap: a Proof of Technology showed it can be performed autonomously, but not how it should be integrated into the inbound operation.
This thesis treats that integration not as a technical problem but as a socio-technical one, focusing on the divergence between Schiphol, as infrastructure provider, and the ground handlers, as operational users. Mapping the current operation and analysing where their interests pull apart revealed five tensions, each a point where positioning the system was not enough and an explicit design choice was needed. Resolving these in co-design produced shared choices on deployment, autonomy and role division, co development, safe behaviour, and digital integration.
To hold these choices together under an uncertain future, they were synthesised using an Adaptive North Star: a direction deliberately kept open to change rather than a fixed endpoint. This direction was made concrete through three artefacts: a Horizon 3 operational concept, a horizon-based roadmap organised around learning milestones, and a phased set of requirements.
The thesis contributes an approach for moving autonomous airside systems from technical feasibility towards operational integration, built around the operation a system enters rather than only the task it performs. For Schiphol, it provides a grounded basis for further pilots and decisions.