News

Jan 27, 2024

Port Authority of NY and NJ testing autonomous street sweepers

NEWARK — When Angel L. Rios started working for the Port Authority of New York

NEWARK — When Angel L. Rios started working for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 1987, the agency was beginning to introduce PCs to employees. Now, 36 years later, it's testing an autonomous vehicle in his department.

Rios, the general manager of New Jersey marine terminals, said he's excited about the prospect of a driverless machine cleaning streets, warehouses and parking lots throughout the ports. It's a short and sleek robot that acts kind of like a Roomba, the robotic vacuum that people buy for their homes.

Right now, the agency uses typical human-driven street sweepers to suck up garbage on the 60 miles of road across the ports in the two states, as well as 18,000 linear feet of public wharf space that a cleaning crew is responsible for clearing of trash.

Those machines are limited because they aren't used at night, when there's low visibility; they require someone to operate; they are too big to reach more complex areas, like the berths by the water; and they can't be used inside warehouses because of their size and because they run on diesel. The autonomous vehicle the Port Authority is piloting, which was manufactured by Finland-based Trombia Technologies, would solve most of those issues as an all-electric smaller sweeper that doesn't require a driver.

"What surprised me was the safety factors. I walked near it, in front of it; I drove my vehicle in front of it. I was really impressed by how quickly it stops," Rios said. "The other thing I was concerned about was: Is this going to be something that just picks up gum wrappers and cigarettes? We’ve seen it pick up gravel, stone, sand, salt."

For the last two weeks, the agency has piloted the robot in a vacant lot, on a back road and in a warehouse, testing to see what kinds of debris it's able to pick up, how long it can last on a battery charge and whether it can operate safely.

Michael Bozza, deputy director of the port department, said innovating with new technology is key to achieving multiple goals the Port Authority has.

"We want to look at every technology that can help us be more efficient, do our jobs better, and we have limited staffing but the cargo volumes keep growing," Bozza said. "In order to address the needs of the port, we want to leverage any and all — whether they be technologies or other operational efficiencies — that we can."

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When the pilot program wraps up later this week, agency officials will start to dissect the data and see where the machine performed well and challenges that came up and will figure out next steps to determine whether a machine like this could be a cost-efficient investment.

Seth Wainer, the Port Authority's program director of innovation, said learning from the pilot will also help determine whether that technology can be applied elsewhere within the agency's large purview, which also includes major airports, the PATH train service, bridges and tunnels, and the World Trade Center campus.

"We are actively looking at robotic maintenance opportunities, ways essentially for us that will help us do more and clean more with the same amount of resources," Wainer said.

Wainer's department spends about $3 million a year on pilot programs to test new technologies. Earlier this year, it demonstrated the first drone to carry cargo — a box of Raspberry Rally Girl Scout Cookies — over the Hudson River. A second-phase pilot will get underway this summer to test autonomous vehicles at Kennedy Airport to carry travelers from the parking lot to their terminal.

It's critical that public agencies start investing in technology innovation and not just leave it to the private sector to adapt, Wainer said, especially such agencies as the Port Authority that serve the traveling public.

"The public sector needs to think about what is the level of service customers are really used to as they go about their daily lives, and it's a pretty high level of service," he said. "So we then have to use the same tools and use automation, robotics, artificial intelligence."