May 1, 2019

Dutch designed play area at Singapore airport

Filed under: Architecture,Aviation by Orangemaster @ 9:18 pm

At Jewel Changi International Airport in Singapore at Terminal 1, Canopy Park, you’ll find a play area for all ages, with four very big slides, designed by Dutch engineers and street furniture designers Carve from Amsterdam. The official opening is on 10 June, and everyone will be able to see how the first children and parents will enjoy the play area.

Carve’s Discovery slides look very much like jewellery you can play on. “The rubber patterns on the floor are designed in such a way that they create spiral-shaped dynamic reflections on the surface of the slides, which will surely end up all over instagram.” They are installed at the highest point of the airport and provide a spectacular view. There are four slides: a family wide slide, a free fall slide and two spiral-shaped tunnel slides.

For anyone in The Netherlands and not in Singapore, you can climb onto Carve installations in Amsterdam’s Oosterpark, the Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen, the Ark Park pavilion in Utrecht, the Strijp S grounds in Eindhoven and the red fence square in The Hague.

(Links: bright.nl, Photo: businesstraveller)

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December 1, 2015

Spencer the robot helps airport passengers get around

Filed under: Aviation by Orangemaster @ 12:03 pm

Yesterday Schiphol Airport started tests with a robot to help passengers find their gates, which are often missed due to short transfer times, delayed flights, problems getting around the airport and language barriers.

Spencer the autonomous robot guide (see picture in the link) was designed by the University of Twente together with European partners from Sweden, France, Germany and Switzerland for KLM. The robot won’t drive into a group of travellers, but wait calmly until that group approaches it. “Spencer needs to be able to recognise group behaviour and obstacles, such as baggage trolleys as well as respond to unforeseen situations”. Tests are being carried out this week and won’t involve actual passengers just yet, something that will be done in March 2016 with a new and improved Spencer.

I happened to land at Schiphol yesterday on a day where it had closed down all but one runway due to very strong winds. On my flight, which left and hour and fifteen minutes behind schedule and had us in a turbulent holding pattern above Schiphol, many passengers had already missed their connections or had very short transfer times. I can imagine that when you’re in a rush to get the right answer, a robot may not be able to pick up on your stress, a bit like the photocopier that senses your panic and just won’t print. Then you’d want to talk to a human, as already postulated earlier this year by the University of Twente: “a social robot with an overly human appearance creates an unrealistic sense of expectation for most Dutch people”.

(Link: www.kennislink.nl, screenshot from the video Smart Homes)

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November 25, 2015

Schiphol train station to be renamed in December

Filed under: Aviation by Orangemaster @ 11:36 am
airplane1.JPG

Dutch Rail has announced that on 14 December it will be changing the name of the train station Schiphol, the national airport station often pronounced ‘Skip-pole’, to Schiphol Airport which will help travellers identify it better as an airport, including a wee airplane pictogram to make it perfectly clear.

One wonders why Dutch Rail didn’t think of that ages ago, as Schiphol is more often than not referred to as Amsterdam Airport Schiphol just like it says on the building or Amsterdam Airport. After all the Netherlands has Eindhoven Airport and Rotterdam The Hague Airport, and many more with that formulation.

The history of the name Schiphol (literally ‘ship hole’ or ‘ship grave’) is interesting as it is unclear and based on theories. No ship wrecks were found when the land was reclaimed. The name could have possibly been related to the portaging of ships, dragging them from one body of water to another or having to do with a ‘hol’ that is a ‘low lying are of land’, as in ‘Holland’.

Using the name Schiphol for airplanes in Dutch is as amusing as using the word ‘shipping’ for sending parcels nowadays that doesn’t involve any ships.

(Links: www.rtvnh.nl, en.wikipedia.org)

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