$75,000 From the Henry L. Hillman Foundation to Help Build Airport Mapping Prototype

A new mapping tool, inspired by the Future Travel Experience Aviation & Robotics Summit 2024, has the potential to improve the performance and lower the cost of deicing operations.

Formica ProtoFab has been awarded $75,000 from the Allegheny County Airport Authority Charitable Foundation, made possible by a grant from Pittsburgh’s Henry L. Hillman Foundation, to begin commercializing the general-purpose mapping tool.

Pittsburgh International Airport hosted the 2024 Aviation & Robotics Summit, which brought together aviation and robotics industry professionals. In the technology ideation workshops, attendees were asked to identify challenges in the industry and – through a rigorous process that included risk, cost and other analyses – propose tech solutions.

The grant from the Henry L. Hillman Foundation continues the partnership it has established with the airport to fund projects that can serve as models for others in the aviation industry both nationally and internationally – including past grants to the airport’s childcare center and sensory room, Presley’s Place.

Right now, airport vehicles are made up of a variety of makes and models that “can’t speak” to each other. The systems that offer this kind of tech on new vehicles are prohibitively expensive and can’t be integrated onto old vehicles. The Formica ProtoFab solution would provide a cost-effective, universal solution that can be retrofitted across a range of vehicles.

“Our hope is to use this new mapping tool to collect data from airport ground operations such as snow removal and line striping,” said Jim Moorehead, vice president of Airport Operations for the Allegheny County Airport Authority.

“Ultimately, the goal is it to generate compliance-support documents and track and reduce the usage of consumables such as potassium acetate, a deicing agent, and paint. We will now have real-time feedback to measure how much and how evenly we are spreading liquid potassium acetate and paint. Too much wastes resources, and too little may present a safety and compliance issue.”

The data collected will generate a map, including a satellite image of the area under operation, GPS waypoints of the actual vehicle travel path, a heatmap or other graphical representation of payload dispersal, and summary/aggregate data of operation. An engineer will collect all the data and process it offline to create reports.

Increased optimizations for speed and cost and more detailed accuracy will be developed in later stages.

The deicer mapping tool will measure the quantity and location of liquid potassium acetate dispensed by the deicer trucks. The system will collect, store and transmit data that can be used to generate reports that will provide a detailed record of runway maintenance during winter events. It will also offer feedback on usage rates to ensure that runways are not over/under-treated, resulting in better performance and lower costs.

An onboard computer with a GPS module will map the vehicle’s location. That will interface to a flow meter sensor integrated with the dispensing system to display time, location and gallons used. The flow rate sensor will be an inline meter located between the pump and nozzles.

“This is a simple, and reversible, installation that will be easily scaled and  can be added across various trucks regardless of the current controllers’ brand/model/age,” said Mike Formica, owner of Pittsburgh-based Formica ProtoFab.

The technology also can work with trucks painting runway stripes.

For trucks with existing closed-loop systems and flow meters, PIT will evaluate the ability to mimic that signal electrically without additional hardware.

Formica is a serial entrepreneur who worked with both the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University and was the former managing director of hardware at Innovation Works Inc.’s AlphaLab Gear startup accelerator and lead of the Robotics Factory initiative.

He hopes to begin testing the prototype in early 2025 and then leverage the data obtained in the concept stage to develop a viable product that can be field-ready. This includes an IP-rated industrial embedded computer, a more powerful and accurate GPS and antennas, and a wider variety of flow sensors.

“A goal of the workshop was to show how quickly an issue can be addressed when utilizing existing technology,” said Formica. “We have now demonstrated by focusing in on a smaller, specific issue and looking at existing technology. A solution can be developed in months.

“It is a repeatable exercise and one we hope to do again at the Future Travel Experience World Innovation Summit in 2025,” he added.

PIT will host the next Future Travel Experience World Innovation Summit from May 13 to 15. The three-day conference will bring aviation and technology innovators together to address the aviation industry’s biggest challenges, explore PIT’s pioneering terminal program, and spotlight the city’s vibrant tech and innovation landscape.

The FTE World Innovation Summit is an evolution of the highly successful Aviation & Robotics Summit, on which PIT collaborated with FTE in 2023 and 2024. The reimagined event will have an expanded focus on three important core areas: advanced technology, energy and sustainability, and future airports.

For more information on the 2025 World Innovation Summit, please visit www.futuretravelexperience.com.